Dreadnought's Revenge
by Xeal II
Summary: An old, decommissioned warship crewed by drunken, rowdy civilian and ex-military salvage profiteers learns to survive and cope with the aftermath of the Cylon attack. Searching out the survivors of Cain's civilian fleet, they begin to fight back.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note:_

_This story is a departure from typical BSG fanfiction. This isn't about some grand ship that escaped the colony with a huge fleet. These are ordinary people, some good, some bad, and most drunken pirates. This is about a less-than-reputable bunch that survives the initial attack mostly by blind luck and a bit of low-brow innovation. Their ship makes Galactica look state-of-the-art by comparison, their crew is borderline piratical and they spend a fair amount of the story drunk. They have their encounters with Galactica, Pegasus and, of course, the Cylons on their way, much to everyone's disdain._

_Also, I'm still working on the next chapter for A Colonial Sunset, so no worries that it won't continue :)._

**Dreadnought's Revenge**

**4 Days before the attack, in orbit around Caprica's moon.**

Ships littered the boneyard, ancient vessels floating in the cold blackness, devoid of life. Civilian and military craft alike were stranded here, unlikely companions united in neglect. Imprecise orbits abounded, with the lifeless vessels drifting into each other, scarring pockmarked surfaces. Only one vessel remained lit with any form of power, drifting lazily through the center of the ghostly formation, her massive, armored bulk giving her worn hull a sense of barely restrained menace.

Blackened metal, pitted and worn, gave way to the ship's nameplate, missing a single letter but otherwise as glorious as she always had been. _Dreadnought_, the letters read. Her prow was covered with ribbing and armor, her long form similar to the battlestars that rendered her obsolete even in the first war.

This once-mighty vessel represented the first Colonial capital ships, the ancestor to the twelve battlestars which were better equipped, faster and stronger. Dreadnought was a pre-battlestar, or as they were once called, battleships. They were built to engage capital ships with little thought to fighter defense or long-range capability. Only later was the need for large-scale carrier capability, ammunition production ability and long-duration water recycling realized. Almost immediately relegated to secondary roles as the battlestars replaced them on the front lines, the pre-battlestars were run down in the conflict that followed, and finally retired after the end of the war. Dreadnought alone survived the scrapper's torch, transformed into the floating headquarters for the lonely salvage yard.

Her crew was in little better shape. Through corridors of the massive battleship wandered the occasional the drunk, the criminals gone legit, the military cast-outs and the political exiles. These were a hardy breed, well acquainted with the realities of grey salvage operations. They were only a step above pirates, and it showed in their cavalier attitudes.

A lone middle-aged man sat in a plush recliner, looking terribly out of place in the former CIC of the retired battleship, lazily sipping from a tankard of ale. A terrible misshapen scar traced its way down his face, his hair was beginning to gray and his pasty-white complexion seemed to lend credence to the idea that he had been on board for far too long. Intense blue eyes took in everything, watching dispassionately as two crewmen attacked each other in a short but violent bar brawl. It was another day in the boneyard, another gulp of ale. Taking a final pull from his tankard, Captain Thomas Summers stood, tossing a wrench at the offending crewmen, watching with an amused, yet hard expression as it smashed a can of ale near the fighting pair.

"Knock it the frak off. There's customers coming today." His voice boomed out across the bridge as the men stopped fighting, their drunken quarrel forgotten with the prospect of easy money.

"Ya? What do they want Cap'n?" A short balding man stood from the former weapons console, chomping on an unlit cigar. Despite his age and appearance, the other crewmen seemed to take notice and give the man a wide, respectful distance. Something about the man just oozed a short temper.

"Boss men. Some military types. Need some spares for some of the older battlestars and some old fighters. This is big money, so don't frak it up over a woman." Summers answered. The woman in question cracked a sardonic smile, and the crewmen glared at each other once more. They made another pass at trying to fight, until the bald man's shotgun made a timely appearance, firmly ending the struggle with a booming warning shot that knocked out one of the bridge lights.

"Ya. You heard the Cap'n. Godsdamn frakwit sons'a'bitches. Clear the deck." The bald man echoed. His obvious military training shown through the old, weathered exterior.

"You heard Jack, get off my bridge, frakwits." Summers continued, taking a large gulp from his tankard before sitting back down on his self-proclaimed "throne chair." Beneath the weathered deck plating of CIC, the engines coughed, shaking the entire ship, as the core shutdown for the fifth time in a week. Summers didn't even care.

"Damn women, they just frak it up. Just enough women on board to start fights. Not enough to stop 'em." Jack continued, lighting his cigar and taking a long puff.

"Don't really give a damn, Jack, as long as we get paid. This ain't fleet command, and these sure aren't model officers." Summers replied. Then again, Jack himself wasn't much of a model officer either, Summers thought. Kicked out of the Colonial fleet for some unknown reason, former Major Jack Stanton wound up here, at the ass-end of the universe. When Summers had pried a bit into the reason for his speedy departure from the Colonial Fleet, Jack had simply replied "I was just looking for some fun." That was how a lot of people wound up here, at the ass-end of space.

"Yeah, what did 'I' frak up this time, huh?" An irritated feminine voice began. Long, flowing red hair flipped around from the form of a very attractive woman as she swayed her hips seductively. At least the woman in question seemed worth fighting over. Her eyes were almost grey, her body slim and curvaceous at the same time, echoing the ideal form of Aphrodite. Summers felt himself mentally undressing her for a moment as she put her hands on her hips and frowned. He felt that familiar ache. It had been far too long.

"Godsdamn it if you're not all a bunch'a pigs here. Look, the core is frakked up, we need some higher grade tylium, not this cheap badly refined junk you keep sending me." She continued.

"We make this sale today, and you can have the best grade fuel in this system, hun." Summers winked at her as she smiled seductively for a moment before reaching for the ale-soaked wrench still sitting on the deck. She tossed the tool with expert marksmanship, knocking the tankard from Summers' hand and spilling the ale everywhere.

"Don't call me hun, okay? My name is Jamie. But don't call me that either. I'm miss Ellison to you frakwits. And what the hell is that smell? You promised me a clean ship." She laughed and turned around as the Captain stared at his First Mate.

"Still think it was a good idea to bring her on board?" Jack replied. There was something devious in the man's expression, though.

"At least she can take care of herself."

**3 Days before the attack, Battlestar Galactica, approaching the salvage yard.**

Commander Adama stood in CIC, as professional as ever as he surveyed the DRADIS console with an expression of distaste. Saul Tigh stood opposite of him, obviously hungover and tired but still at least tolerably competent today. The DRADIS console above them was littered with readings from the salvage yard, pieces of many vessels scattered about the large decommissioned battleship hovering in the center of the ghostly formation.

"So refresh my memory, Bill. Why are we dealing with these parasites?" Tigh began.

"The conversion for the museum includes a requirement for a squadron of mark II fighters. This is the only salvage yard with enough of them in working condition. The Admirals want us to ferry some parts too." The commander replied with an expression of mild annoyance. "I'd still rather not. Turning this ship into a museum and hauling cargo isn't my idea of a worthy mission for Galactica."

"Well, we get to retire soon, I suppose." Tigh replied in a moment of clarity. There was a touch of maudlin to his voice, and Adama knew that feeling well. When retirement came, what was left to do? He and the old Colonel were as much museum pieces as the ship herself.

"Sir, getting a message from the salvage yard, they are requesting to speak to you." Gaeta spoke out with quick efficiency.

"Salvage Vessel Dreadnought this is Galactica, Actual." Adama began.

"Uh. Hi. We're ready for you. We've got your stuff." An obviously drunk man began, belching mid-sentence. "You can come on over anytime and pick 'em up. Use Docking ring 2, ring 1 is broken."

"Saul, you deal with them. I'm going to my quarters. I have better things to do." Adama answered as he handed the phone to his XO. "Remember, you're on duty." The commander added with a touch of sarcasm.

"Just what the hell was that supposed to mean..." Tigh muttered under his breath, bringing the phone to his ear. "We're coming over now."

The Raptor flight was relatively uneventful, though Tigh was impressed by the immense bulk of the retired battleship. His memory of the war included a number of fleet actions with the Dreadnoughts, and as baseship killers they were as effective as any battlestar, but their reduced range, small fighter complement and inability to operate for long away from supply bases had relegated them to a secondary role. He felt a wave of nostalgia and a number of painful memories simultaneously with bittersweet emotion as his Raptor approached old warship. Sometimes he wondered if he was the same man who had fought in that war so long ago. Retirement, as terrible as it might be, was preferable to the sort of life these salvagers had made for themselves. Adama has rescued him from a fate like that, and he was grateful for that.

As if in reply, the docking bay opened, allowing the Raptor inside. Helo slowed the ship down to a crawl, gently approaching the bay on minimum power. Unlike a battlestar, this old ship had no flight pods, just a small docking bay that allowed for only a few fighter craft and no "combat" landings. This made them completely useless as fighter carriers. The armored door to the bay seemed to jam up for a moment before finally jerking shut. Some of the lights flickered, others didn't turn on at all, angering the old Colonel. He hoped Galactica would be spared this kind of dishonorable fate. Even a museum was better than a pirate mothership. As pressure returned to the docking bay, Tigh cautiously exited the Raptor, worried that the defective door would pop open to space at any moment. An obviously drunk man stumbled into the bay, followed by another older man... with a face the Colonel recognized. His breath caught in his throat and he felt the rage burning within him.

"Major Jack Stanton... I ought to beat the crap out of you for what you pulled."

"Saul? They didn't tell me it was you coming." Jack replied, backing up towards the door as Summers looked on with confusion.

"Hey hey, we're all friends here, right?" Summers added. "We have your stuff."

"This godsdamn piece of garbage tried to frak my wife..." Tigh began, his face turning scarlet with anger.

"Okay... Jack, how about you check in on miss Ellison." Summers added hastily. Jack hesitated a moment before deciding on a quick retreat.

"That's the best idea I've heard all day." Tigh answered. He was on duty, as Adama had reminded him. With difficulty, he suppressed his anger. "Now where's the Vipers and equipment we're supposed to pick up?"

"You have the credits? I was promised 260,000." The pirate captain answered.

"You'll get your godsdamn money when I get my godsdamn Vipers. Now go, get them ready for transport to my ship before I order her to start blowing holes in this flying cesspit." Saul rattled off impatiently.

"Okay, we can do that." Summers replied simply, tapping the comlink near the hatch to the rest of the ship. "Hey look. Get those shipping containers out of the cargo bay. Transfer by wire to their ship..."

"What ship?" A crewman responded over the comlink.

"What the frak ship do you think I'm talking about? Do you not see the giant frakkin' battlestar hovering over us?" The Captain answered in frustration.

"Oh that ship. Okay, Cap'n." The voice replied.

"Real nice operation you got here." Tigh laughed, his anger receding finally.

"Yeah well this is what happens when you spend most of your profits on beer and women." Summers answered in a rare moment of lucidity.

"Don't I know it." Tigh answered with a tone of understanding. He knew he owed Adama for sparing him this fate, for in the face of the pirate captain, Tigh saw himself years before. Gods only knew how paths crossed and changed. There was something else in it too, and for a moment he felt his mind on the cusp of something of great importance. But the haze set in again, and it vanished, leaving only a feeling of emptiness.

The cargo bay door opened to reveal a large number of support parts for the Vipers, obviously salvaged from non-functional fighters. The sight brought back painful memories from the war, memories that, at times, seemed as if they were not his own. He had been almost as much a machine as the metal monsters he had battled. Kill, and kill again. Outside, the first of the Vipers were ferried over to Galactica and a part of the old Colonel wondered was saddened that they would never fly again, but then all good things came to an end, even a thing as mighty and majestic as Galactica herself.

**2 Days before the attack, Salvage Vessel Dreadnought, in orbit over Caprica.**

"Well, we finally got paid. Now for some decent grade fuel." Summers smiled, rolling a keg onto the CIC. "Tylium for the boat, and Ale for her crew." He continued, to a resounding cheer.

"That should keep them happy for awhile, Cap'n." Jack replied as crewmen lined up to tap the keg. "But for us, how about some of that Ambrosia?"

"Beats this swill. But I have a price." Summers expression turned grave.

"Yeah? What's that?"

"What was that business with you and... what was his name... Sligh? Tigh?"

"Yeah, Tigh. Saul Tigh."

"Yeah, right... so what was that about? You nearly queered our deal." Summers continued, his voice beginning to sour with frustration. If there was anything the pirate captain didn't like, it was losing out on money.

"I didn't know it was Galactica coming to pickup the goods. There's not much of a story, though. His wife has frakked something like half the fleet over the years. I partook too, but had the misfortune of getting caught. By him. In the act."

"Is that why you were booted out?" Summers asked, sliding over a shot of ambrosia to the old colonial.

"Nah. But can't imagine it helped." Jack replied, gulping down the ale with an expression of momentary disgust, before smiling. "Harsh stuff. Where'd you get it?"

"Buddy of mine runs a still down on Caprica... Not exactly legal, but better than the government-issued stuff. You're not going to tell me, are you?" Summers poured another round of the amber beverage as the crew continued to banter, joke and attempt to otherwise get frakked.

"I already did. I was just looking for some fun." Jack answered, downing the shot with a quick pound before spying the gorgeous red-head enter the old CIC. "Man, if she isn't a looker."

"Dangerous bitch man," Summers replied. "Space is cold. That one's colder." But Jack wasn't listening any more, his eyes traveling up and down miss Ellison's lithe body with obvious interest. Surprisingly, the woman seemed to accept his mental undressing with delight. Odd, Summers thought, never figured she'd go for the bald guy.

"Captain, we're getting a hail from the surface. They are telling us that our orbital permit has expired and to clear the departure lane immediately." One of the crewmen spoke up, her voice slurring slightly as she struggled to enunciate each word. She was a rather plain woman, not particularly stunning but still mildly attractive in a nerdy sort of way. Summers had kept an eye on her for quite sometime, wondering why a well-trained physicist would be hanging around this bunch. But years of experience told him to avoid prying too much into a woman's past. Truthfully, sometimes you really just didn't want to know. She had an obvious affinity for alcohol, but was otherwise very intelligent and useful in figuring out clever ways to salvage otherwise impossible hulks.

"Sandra, tell them we are having some uh... mechanical difficulties, and need a day to look into them." Summers sat back in his chair and contemplated that. Staying in orbit over Caprica for awhile had its share of advantages. The pirate knew he couldn't leave the boneyard in the hands of his subordinates for long, but a few more days of women and cigars would be nice.

"They say if we don't get that frakking pile of antiquated crap out from their departure lane, they will have our salvage license revoked and send a battlestar to blow us all to space." Sandra answered, punctuating that statement with a hiccup.

"Frakkin colonials... no offense Jack... think they can do as they damn well please. Fine, bring us about as slow as you can manage, lets make a big show of limping out of here. It ought to piss them off a bit." Summers winked at her.

"Okay. One-quarter engine power. Yay. Woohoo. Off we go." Sandra answered sarcastically, rubbing her head slightly. "I'm gonna be hung over tomorrow. Thought you said this beer was good?"

"I hear there's a cure for that." Summers smiled, gesturing toward his quarters. He turned to watch Jack attempt to pickup Ellison, expecting a bit of humor. Instead, his brow furled in concentration. Despite his drunken haze and obvious need to frak something, the captain swore he had seen her before, somewhere on Caprica. But her hair was supposed to be blonde, wasn't it? Sandra sauntered over and simply started kissing all over him with definite inexperience, breaking Summers' train of thought. As he escorted the physicist to his quarters, he felt an unease deep in his gut, like the kind he had when he was a child and Cylons descended upon his homeworld of Tauron, like the feeling he had before his first salvage vessel had been destroyed by Zarek's "freedom fighters." It was not a pleasant feeling and it almost spoiled his evening with Sandra. Almost.

**1 Day before the attack, Battlestar Pegasus, fleet shipyards**

Standing perfectly erect, Admiral Helena Cain made an imposing sight, even more so in the hangar bay of the great battlestar Pegasus. As a salvage operator, Summers had seen his share of battlestars, but these newer Mercury-class ships were something else to behold. It was hard to imagine that his ancient Dreadnought was once a frontline warship of the same fleet which now held these powerful behemoths. Cain clicked her heels in annoyance, staring at the Captain with an expression of utter disdain. Even though she was shorter than the salvage captain, one wouldn't know it by the expression of complete and utter domination the woman held.

"Admiral Cain, I am Captain Summers."

"I don't need to know your name. You have the parts we need?"

"Yes."

"Then that's all I need from you. You have the requisition list, I assume?"

"Yeah, all of the invoices are in there. Fourteen class-D armor plates refitted for colonial battlestar use, three type-42 I-beam structural ribs and... whatever that other stuff is." Summers replied, offering the printed invoices to the domineering admiral. Why she had even bothered to come down from CIC for this supply run of salvaged parts, Summers couldn't fathom.

"Good. Colonel Fisk will provide you with your... compensation, scavenger."

"Our work is legal." Summers replied defensively.

"So is prostitution, on Tauron." Cain quipped without blinking an eye, turning on her heels as Colonel Fisk walked over, careful to maintain perfect military decorum, saluting his superior and coming to a halt as he gazed on the unshaven, unkempt captain offending the otherwise clean, military nature of Pegasus.

"Colonel Belzen is busy, so I get to deal with you." The Colonel's perfect military stature relaxed somewhat as Helena Cain vanished from the hangar deck. "That's a Dreadnought-class battleship you've converted, isn't it?"

"Yeah, found her about to be broken up by a Tauron scrapping company. It's hard to maintain a ship like that with my small crew, but we manage." Summers answered.

"I'm surprised she's still flying. Tough ship though. But enough of that, on to business." Fisk continued, his expression slightly less demeaning than Cain's had been. He quickly signed the forms as Summers' crew tractored out the armor plates and ribbing from Dreadnought's transport shuttle. Some of the ribbing as almost as long as the transport itself, it was hard to imagine these parts as tiny replacements for similar pieces on Pegasus.

"Colonel, not that I mind the business, but why us?" Summers asked, slightly annoyed at being sober. But it wouldn't do to be trashed on meeting with an Admiral on one of these new battlestars.

"Beancounters at headquarters decided that buying salvaged parts was a cheaper alternative to fabricating new ones. I might ask you where you found armor and ribbing of colonial fleet spec." Fisk asked darkly, his eyes squinting slightly in suspicion.

"We discovered some wrecks from the Cylon war that had gone unnoticed. Some of the wreckage was from a battlestar, though we don't know which one. Will these parts still work on your ship?"

"Yes, armor and ribbing is pretty standard stuff, it's in good shape. Standard overhaul procedures often discover over-stressed components; it's a pretty easy swap." Fisk gazed at the forms for a moment, running the numbers in his head. "You're not getting much for these parts, 52,000 credits is a bargain, and you don't strike me as the charitable sort."

"Your beancounters determined that any battlestar wreckage from the Cylon War was still technically colonial property since it was never decommisioned and assigned to a scrap yard. They paid us a finders fee only. Better that than the black market and a possible firing squad, I say." Summers laughed for a moment before realizing he was in polite company.

A woman with a technician's uniform scurried across the deck, obviously in some kind of hurry. She tripped over a carelessly discarded wrench, spilling her clipboard everywhere. Summers bent down and helped her collect the scattered paperwork, leaning upward again to look into her face.

"Ellison?" He asked, incredulously. The technician merely shook her head, collected her forms and quickly departed for some unknown task. Nonetheless, the ominous feeling Summers had earlier returned. The woman looked so much like his engineer, it was uncanny. What were the odds? Did the woman have a twin?

"Something wrong?" Fisk asked, good naturedly.

"A bit of deja vu. It's not the first time either."

"Right... She's a nice looking girl, but I wouldn't try anything." Fisk continued, his eyes following the attractive woman's departing ass with obvious interest.

"Why's that?" The Captain asked, his eyes glued to the same person, but for slightly different reasons. The unease was still there.

"Heh. She doesn't care for men. Believe me, I tried. Even Thorne couldn't get a go with that one." Fisk laughed, rumbling basso echoing across the hangar deck as his eyes flicked briefly in the direction Cain had taken earlier. "Look, I'm about to go off duty, how about you join me for a drink, on our tab. Call it a little extra finders fee."

"Better than watching these guys unload cargo. Whattya got?" Summers answered, happy for a drink to take the edge off. Dealing with the abrasive admiral had been somewhat tiring. That bad feeling in the pit of his stomach was still there. It would be easier to drown it in booze, and the Captain was never one to decline a drink in any event.

"Only the finest." Fisk stated proudly. Summers knew the Colonel wasn't giving away his 'finest' without some other agenda, but the pirate captain knew a good connection when he saw one. Some Colonial officers knew how to do a bit of side business, and Summers wasn't one to turn such opportunities down. He tried to force down his unease about the woman with deliberate effort.

**Zero-Day, Salvage Vessel Dreadnought, returning to salvage yard**

Silence covered the bridge of the old battleship, leaving Summers alone on deck as the ship glided across space on sublight, only the humming of the ship and the gentle waves of the lone remaining DRADIS console keeping him company. He rubbed his temples slightly, trying to banish the headache from his hangover. Colonel Fisk certainly hadn't been idly boasting about Pegasus' stores of alcohol. Unlike a military vessel, most of the crew slept on a regular schedule, leaving the ship almost entirely unmanned for long periods of time. His company could only afford around a hundred crewmen anyway, leaving Dreadnought horrendously understaffed at all times.

The captain enjoyed such time alone with his ship, a vessel so old and battered only he could love her. How many battles had that once-mighty warship seen? Summers had seen the scorch marks on her hull plating, the clean areas where entire armor panels had been replaced and even a few stress points in her ribbing that belied serious battle damage at one point in time. Dreadnought's gun batteries still dotted the outside of her hull, but the barrels had been filled, welded shut and rendered useless upon decommission. Only a handful of civilian-legal short range missiles remained, and even then only because Sagitarron pirate and terrorist activity had convinced the government to allow civilians limited defensive armaments. Not that any of them bothered Dreadnought, the vessel's armor and sheer bulk had convinced most would-be pirates to steer clear.

The DRADIS console beeped, indicating a new inbound contact, snapping the captain from his moment of introspection. Space was vast, but shipping accidents still happened from time to time. Summers forced himself to his feet, dragging himself to the helm and adjusting course to steer clear of the incoming vessel. Oddly enough, the vessel, by now recognizable as an extremely large ship, battlestar-size, changed course to match his.

"Does this guy want a collision?" The captain muttered to himself as he adjusted course again.

Insurance fraud in shipping "accidents" was common enough, but why use such a large ship? Pirates generally preferred fast, smaller craft, and certainly none operated anything the size of a battlestar. Even then, they rarely operated in Caprican space. For a moment, Summers wondered darkly if the ship might be a Cylon basestar. But that couldn't be right, they were long gone. The DRADIS continued beeping as he stared at the "unknown contact" with rapt interest. Deciding the situation didn't sit right, he grabbed the CIC phone.

"Wake up. I need bridge crew now." Summers spoke loudly.

It was only a few minutes before the first of his groggy crewmen showed up on the bridge, and of course it was Jack. Did the man ever sleep?

"What's going on, Tom?"

"Look at that. It's been chasing us for awhile. Thought it might be pirates.. but..."

"No... Course, speed... approximate size and configuration..." Jack furrowed his brow for a moment as he studied the DRADIS and computer readouts. "Oh.. FRAK. Jump. Now."

"What's going on Jack."

"That thing has a center axis, dual primary hull design. It's a basestar. I recognize the general configuration from flight school."

"That's not possible."

"Don't argue with me. Jump. Now!" Jack said, staring at the DRADIS.

"Okay okay. I need a few minutes to do the calculations." Summers vaulted over the FTL console, wiping off the dust and grime.

"We don't have that much time. They are launching fighters... probably raiders. Baseship is turning away, going to let the raiders do the dirty work. I'm arming our missiles." Jack yelled, falling back into military routine out of ingrained habit. His fingers worked the weapons console rapidly, sending commands to the ships handful of missile batteries.

"We only have a few."

"Yeah, I know. I'll make them count." The ex-military man replied quickly. "Look, if this gets nasty, just jump us, blind, anywhere."

"This can't be that bad. Are you sure that's a basestar?"

"Sir, with all due respect, shut the FRAK up if you want to live through this." Jack said angrily, finally reaching the salvage captain.

Summers maneuvered the ship expertly, throttling the ship up to flank speed, trying desperately to reach the relative safety of the salvage yard as he ran through the calculations. Vibrations echoed throughout the ship as missile impacts hit the armor plating, shaking the old battleship as she trudged through the growing battle. Jack waited until the last possible moment before launching a missile spread that claimed four of the attacking raiders in quick succession.

"Whatever this is, we're not a priority target. They will be attacking colonial fleet installations with their main attack waves. We're just an interesting sideshow. Hopefully." Jack added, firing off another wave of missiles. This time the raiders were expecting the attack, and quickly eliminated most of the missiles. Still, another raider vanished from the DRADIS console. "We don't have much time. Another wave is inbound."

"I'm steering us into the salvage yard, that should make things more difficult for them." Summers replied. He didn't have much combat experience, and even that was limited to fighting off pirate attacks, but he knew how to fly his ship better than anyone. Dreadnought glided through the haphazard wreckage, forcing the raiders to dodge the ruined hulks and floating debris. Summers twisted the old battleship on her long axis, diving underneath a particularly large wreck, nearly scraping the bottom of the derelict. Jack took advantage of the situation and launched his final spread of missiles, destroying several raiders and forcing the others back temporarily.

"That's it for our missiles. We need to get out of here before they send more." Jack continued as other crewmen ran up to the bridge. Sandra was there, her unkempt hair frizzled and ragged, her body still wrapped up in a blanket, worry and puzzlement drawn across her face. Summers looked around for Ellison, but the attractive engineer was nowhere to be found. Where was she?

"What's happening?" The scientist asked quickly,.

"We're under Cylon attack." Summers answered, his voice a deadpan.

"Impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible." Jack replied. "How are we on the calculations, Cap'n."

"Almost ready."

"Good. Because the radiological alarm just went off. We have inbound nuclear missiles."

"What?" Sandra gasped as other crewmen dove for their stations with fear.

"Almost there..." Sweat dripped from Summers' brow as the missiles closed on Dreadnought, like the specter of death coming for them. Space was cold, merciless and unforgiving. Every salvager knew this, it was an axiom as old as spaceflight. Flying ever-closer, the missiles approached the old battleship as time seemed to slow for the captain. With the last number in place, he twisted the FTL key immediately, and for one agonizing moment he thought they weren't going to make it. Then the world faded, stretching impossibly long and incredibly short at the same time, like the very essence of existence was being torn and reformed like putty.


	2. Chapter 2

**Zero-Day, Battleship Dreadnought in high orbit over Caprica**

Death. Its essence emanated from the embattled space above the majestic world of Caprica. Vipers and Raiders dueled over the burning hulks of destroyed battlestars leaking air and flame into the depths of the void. Smaller ships still hung on against the great basestars, desperately fighting a losing battle as salvos passed between cruisers and capital ships with deadly precision. A small group of old light cruisers, led by an even older heavy cruiser, braved the baseships and closed to point-blank range. Through it all, the old Dreadnought persevered in her course, struggling to find a safe zone in the one-sided conflict that raged throughout the system.

Raiders peppered the massive battleship as she glided through the war zone, trailing wreckage and leaking air. If she had been fully manned, Dreadnought would have already suffered casualties, but fortunately many of the outer compartments had been abandoned.

The bridge crew watched the DRADIS array with expressions of shock and incredulity. A heavy cruiser, her port side aflame, crashed into a baseship, going up like a miniature sun, temporarily scrambling everything. The force of the explosion tore a blade from the Cylon vessel as Raptors fled the destruction, releasing flares in a desperate attempt to escape. A missile clipped one, sending it pinwheeling into the side of Dreadnought, tearing loose a damaged armor plate as missiles let loose from the reloaded launchers. A handful of destroyers lay far across the system, engaging in battle-line action against a vastly superior number of Cylon basestars. Chaos reigned as the Colonial capital fell to the nuclear apocalypse.

Summers fell into his chair, his face emotionless, as if all the blood had drained from it. DRADIS readings were utterly insane; it was difficult to tell living vessels from destroyed wreckage. Wireless transmissions were chaotic, rambling and incoherent.

"...Battlestar Triton crippled. CNP program has..."

"...Heavy cruiser Aphrodite destroyed, light cruisers Vendetta and Pythia continuing to attack..."

"...Admiral Nagala has engaged Cylon fleet in Virgon's orbit..."

"...CNP program has infected systems, shutdown imminent, trapped in orbit over..."

Jack Stanton flipped open the weapons console, barking orders into the comm, trying to get missiles reloaded into the launchers. The short-range missile system wasn't meant for an easy reload, it wasn't part of the ship's original armament. The launchers, like many things on the ancient vessel, had been jury-rigged, and somewhat poorly at that. The ship shook with explosions as Raiders mercilessly bombarded the old vessel.

"We got one launcher back up. I have another spread of missiles available. We better use them wisely." Jack stated the obvious.

"Steer us out of this mess, Sandra. We need to find a safe zone, fast." Summers scratched his chin with worry. So far his ship had only dealt with a few raiders, but soon the baseships would finish off the remaining Colonial assets in the area. Then they would be in real trouble.

"Unknown vessel, identify or you will be fired upon. Repeat, this is the battlestar Zeus. Identify." The wireless hummed with activity as a damaged battlestar came into close range on DRADIS. Somehow she had escaped the line action nearby, but she was floating off axis, slowly rotating in an uncontrolled lateral spin.

"Zeus this is the Salvage Vessel Dreadnought." Summers replied. "Do you require assistance? Who am I speaking to?"

"This is Major Blythe, acting commander of the Zeus. You're large for a salvage ship. Do you have military personnel on board?"

"Yes. This is Major Jack Stanton." Jack took over the wireless just in time.

"Major, our ship has sustained critical structural damage." The voice began. "We are attempting to evacuate, can you cover us?" Jack looked over at Summers, who nodded in grim acceptance. Jack held out the phone to his captain with obvious respect.

"This is Captain Summers, owner of the ship. You are welcome on board, but you must hurry, we cannot hold off these raiders for very long. Bring any weapons you can, our ship is an ex-military vessel, you may be able to help arm her." The captain replied, looking over at Sandra. "Open the docking bay as soon as you are able."

"I'll cover us with the missiles." Jack replied, moving over to the weapons console.

"Bring us about broadside, Sandra, our armor can absorb a few hits, I think." Summers laughed darkly. "I hope, anyway."Certainly if it couldn't, he'd never know anyway.

Outside, the last of the flotilla of destroyers and cruisers went up in nuclear flame as the battle died down. A few Raptors managed to escape, joining the shuttles, Vipers and Raptors fleeing from the dying Zeus. The battlestar's batteries opened up with a large flak field, halting the advance of the Cylon fleet momentarily. As she listed out of control, the holes in her armor became apparent, air and flames leaking from twisted, scorched ribbing, still brimming with radioactivity. Point defense guns blazed into the waning battlefield, tearing apart an entire wave of raiders. Missiles wormed their way through the firing solution, impacting the wounded basestar and tearing apart her primary batteries.

"Dreadnought, we can't hold off any longer, our computers are going crazy, some kind of network attack. I'm launching everything and everyone I can from the starboard pod. Please help them."

The transmission was cutoff as the basestars closed within jamming range, launching another round of missiles into the wrecked battlestar. A few twisted around the dying vessel and slammed into Dreadnought, shearing off an armor plate and destroying one of the fleeing Raptors.

"Jack. If there's anytime to use those missiles, it's probably now." Summers stared up at the DRADIS console in worry.

"Yeah... launching now." Jack targeted the basestar with every missile he could, launching eight at the massive warship. "I'm hoping that by firing on the baseship, we convince it that we are fully armed. Maybe buy us some time."

The missiles impacted the center axis of the baseship, doing moderate damage, but otherwise having little effect, they were fighter-killers, not capital ship grade. Nonetheless, the massive warship backed off slowly, launching a squadron of additional raiders into the fray to handle the unexpected threat. The delay bought them a few more precious seconds as ships from the crippled battlestar continued to the uncertain safety of the obsolete warship. Docking procedures were crazy, some ships were cast aside as soon as the people had made it off, making room for others. Vipers were simply craned into the cargo bay with their pilots still in the cockpits. If Dreadnought had been a battlestar, with a landing pod, more could have been done, but the slow approach speed needed to dock with the cargo bays created a bottleneck.

"That's it for your bluff. We have to get out of here." Summers spoke a few moments later, watching as the basestar overcame its reluctance to engage the new threat.

"Captain, our docking bay is full, we can't hold any more ships." Sandra reported efficiently.

"Then eject more of them if you have to. Get the people on board." Summers yelled with frustration. The queue of ships trying to get in was almost gone, just a few more moments and they'd have everyone they could get to.

"Radiological Alarm!" Jack screamed. "They are preparing to destroy the Zeus. We must get out of here, NOW!"

"I've got FTL coordinates locked. Get those last ships in here!" Summers yelled into the intercom.

"Dreadnought, you can't do any more good from here. Go on. Get out of here. Thank you." The Zeus's commanding officer said solemnly over the wireless. The last Viper was craned into the cargo bay, literally dropped on top of its fellows. Summers twisted the FTL key as the nuclear explosion consumed the battlestar, tearing her apart into radioactive debris...

**Day 1 – Battleship Dreadnought, Unknown Location Near the Twelve Colonies**

Only a single day had passed since the great destruction had been visited upon their world, destroying the lives of billions and shattering the sanity of those who remained. Dreadnought glided silently in the vacuum, her running lights dim, her engines pulsing with only faint life. Many new wounds had been opened up upon her flanks, but salvagers were already outside, welding panels back together. A handful of Vipers and a single Raptor escorted the decrepit battleship, the only defense between life and death.

Captain Summers leaned on his chair's armrest in CIC, the sight of the ship's leader sitting on the bridge seemed to offend the rescued Colonial officers which had gathered around. Though they were on the same side, unlikely allies forced together through dire circumstance, he still felt a petty satisfaction at "sticking it to the man." Captain Isard seemed to be the leader of the colonial survivors, most of them from Zeus, but others from many different vessels. Though he was reasonable for a colonial officer, there were others under his command who seemed to think simply taking the warship from its salvage crew would be the best course. Gratitude was something you might expect from a whore, but never from an officer.

"We need to arm this ship. Your missiles launchers, even supposing we could find more reloads, are not sufficient to defend the ship from a basestar." The cool-headed officer began. Blood stained his once-pristine uniform, his bloodshot brown eyes a testament to his lack of sleep. Though the man was slightly overweight, he seemed thinner already since stepping out of his Raptor and boarding Dreadnought. Summers chuckled under his breath. The apocalypse had come, and the only thing he could think about was how it was the end of all fat people.

"That's obvious." Jack replied with indifference.

"Well, this is a salvage ship, you know." Ellison interjected. "Let's go salvage something; there's wreckage all over this system. Some of it high-grade stuff." As the gorgeous engineer began, Summers merely watched in quiet suspicion, his mind still reeling from meeting her near-twin on Pegagus. He hadn't told a soul of the experience, but it was unnerving. The odds against it were staggering. A gut feeling told him there was some connection between her and the attack, but there was absolutely nothing to go on.

"We could walk right into an ambush." One of the other colonial officers added. She was a tall woman, very domineering. Her manner reminded Summers of Admiral Cain. She was obviously a part of the "take over the ship and dump the civilians" faction. Summers had ways of dealing with that eventuality, however.

"Look. We have battery mounts, we just need workable gun barrels and shells. We can probably salvage those from colonial wrecks. This ship is so old, she might just appear to be a wreck herself if we do this right." Ellison added, her plan immediately catching Isard's interest. Summers merely watched in silent contemplation. No one had ever accused him of talking to much, that was certain, but it was amazing how much useful information could be gained just by shutting up for awhile.

"What do you have in mind, Jamie?" Jack replied, using Ellison's first name. That was new, Summers thought.

"We jump in close enough to the locations of some of those battles we witnessed earlier. But far enough out to avoid immediate detection. We spin the ship a little and drift towards the wrecks with power shutdown. To anyone far away, we'll look like another derelict." Ellison explained.

"A sound plan. But it's risky." Isard answered. "We have to try. We can't survive without a means of defending ourselves."

"I agree." Summers answered simply, still deep in thought. It was a simple statement, but it was also a test. A way to see what Ellison was made of.

"Sir, with all due respect, this is idiotic. We need to try and make contact with other Colonial elements. There must be other surviving units." The woman from earlier added. "We need to take command of this ship and..." Isard immediately cut the young woman off.

"Shut your frakking mouth, Elena. These people saved your skin, it's their ship, we're guests here, so frakking act like one." Isard began, his face red with anger. "Too many people died today, and there's no guarantee there are ANY other colonial survivors. Until we find evidence of others, we must presume we are the last of our species."

Those words fell like a jackhammer on both crews. Silence echoed across CIC, interrupted only by the DRADIS sweeps and gentle humming of the engines. Summers glared at Elena with barely restrained rage as Jack's hand brushed the stock of his shotgun. Sensing a sudden need to end the tension, Summers changed the topic.

"On a more positive note, we have a full load out of tylium fuel, and at least a dozen chilled kegs of beer." Summers chuckled as Isard cracked a smile for the first time. Many colonials visibly relaxed.

"Best news I've heard in awhile." The young Captain answered. Elena stormed off the CIC, her resentment following her like a missile out the door.

**Day 2, Battleship Dreadnought, Unpowered In Orbit Over Caprica**

Salvage operations continued, parts of the destroyed battlestars and cruisers providing a steady stream of gun barrels, missile launchers and point-defense guns. For every repairable weapon, the crew found a dozen dead hulks, but the sheer number of destroyed ships made the job relatively easy. Careful to avoid attracting attention, Dreadnought remained powered down, completely vulnerable to Cylon attack should any care to investigate. The ship maneuvered slowly by venting atmosphere, cautiously random movements that would only appear coordinated to one who decided to investigate visually. Teams of suited salvage crew and colonial survivors slowly maneuvered salvaged wreckage into the docking bays of the mammoth battleship while others welded the components onto the hull.

With the destruction of the fleet, most of the munitions had been destroyed in secondary explosions, but investigations were yielding at least some usable ammunition. One search even found a handful of civilian survivors trapped in a sealed compartment on board a ship that somehow had become wedged in the remains of a cruiser. Things were going well, and that was what Summers feared the most. Things never went well, and that feeling in his gut was returning again. It was Isard who broke the silence, however.

"Status Report, how goes the operation?" The colonial officer spoke into the phone.

"We've returned three gun batteries to functional condition. We found four reusable missile launchers, but we were only able to find around twenty usable missiles thus far. Even that is something like a miracle. Those light munitions don't tend to survive well." Jack said, directing the salvage operations from his space suit.

"Do we have any shells for the main batteries?" Summers added.

"Yes, one magazine of a battlestar remained relatively intact. We were able to salvage nearly 150 armor-piercing rounds and around 20 flak shells. Furthermore, I think with all of this metal, damaged equipment, tylium and damaged munitions, we might be able to manufacture some of our own, given enough time."

"That's great news." Isard began. "We are able to produce some limited ammunition from equipment brought over on the Raptors. It would only be useful for point-defense guns and Vipers, though."

"It's better than nothing." Jack added. "We have four more battery barrels here we're trying to get at now, which means we might be able to get two additional main batteries back on-line given another few hours."

"Get the barrels out, and whatever else you can find in the next hour. After that, I'm pulling the plug." Summers ordered, getting used to ordering rather than asking.

"Why's that, sir?" Isard asked curiously. "We're doing pretty well here, we should continue." The officer was careful to suggest rather than order, respecting the ship's owner, for now. For his part, Summers glanced over at Ellison, chatting with Sandra, who manned the FTL console, ready in the event the Cylons should make an appearance.

"This whole thing makes me uneasy. Only twenty four hours ago this place was crawling with basestars, we shouldn't press our luck." Summers spoke softly.

"It does seem a little too easy." Isard agreed. "All right, we'll give it one more hour."

"Captain, maybe we should send someone down to the planet, to see if there are survivors." Ellison spoke up, her long red hair cascading over her prominent breasts. Everyone else seemed to be fooled, but Summers suspected she was up to no good. She had supposedly slept through the entire firefight over the salvage yards, and had been conspicuously missing during the rescue of Zeus's crew. Still, it made no sense, there was no such thing as a Cylon collaborator, the very nature of Man and Cylon prevented such things, didn't it?

"Who knows what lurks around this planet. I'm willing to bet there are Cylons down there right now, exterminating anyone who survived." Isard added, backing the Captain.

"All the more reason to save them! Can you imagine what those machines will do to them? We can beat them!" Ellison screamed, tears running down her cheeks. The whole thing looked staged to Summers, who had made a career out of reading very unscrupulous people. One didn't go into the salvage business without the ability to understand such things. Summers decided it was time to push a few buttons. As Jack would say, he was a gambling man.

"Do you want to die? That's what it will come to, you know. Are you so expert on the Cylons that you would know their tactics, their movements? Come now, even Captain Isard here makes no such claim." Summers forced a fake smile, glaring at her. Her expression flickered for a moment, her cheeks flushing with anger, before she corrected herself, letting the tears flow once more. Her eyes remained locked on Summers. She knows I'm fishing, he thought, interesting. The Captain had learned to trust his instincts a long time ago, and he knew what had to be done.

"Why, now, would you want us to walking into an ambush?" He began, walking towards a keg of ale, filling his tankard lazily. "You're an engineer, do the math, what would that accomplish?" He continued, taking a long pull of the frothy drink.

"We can't just abandon our people." She pleaded, very believably. But by now, even Captain Isard was beginning to suspect something else was going on.

"So, you would have us power up our engines, man our shuttles, and alert every Cylon within range that we are here, vulnerable, with half our crew planetside on some damn-fool mission?" Summers continued, sitting back down on his chair and guzzling ale. He finished with a loud belch, idly flicking some piece of debris from the cracked leather surface. Isard's eyes flicked towards one of his marines, catching the cue from the old salvage captain.

"Never thought I'd hear these words, much less speak them, but I think you're in league with the Cylons." Summers leaped, hoping to provoke a reaction. He expected her to plead innocence, to run, or even to claim it was all a bout of insanity brought on by the stress. All of these things were perfectly plausible, but the old captain's gut was telling him something different. Something was off about her, something didn't add up in the usual way. He might never have noticed if not for the apocalypse that had descended down upon them, but he definitely noticed now.

Instead of pleading, running or denying, her expression shifted rapidly from sadness and despair to perfect, machine-like coldness. Before anyone would react, she reached for one of Isard's marines, snapping his neck with one deft move. Isard drew his sidearm, but Ellison was faster, knocking the weapon away with a vicious backhand. She reached for his neck, and Isard knew he was dead. Then he felt a spray of wet liquid all over his body as his ears registered a singular booming sound.

Ellison's face went from one of cold, calculated rage to one of shock and surprise. Strangely, she smiled as her body slumped to the deck. Behind her, Summers stood, holding Jack's shotgun, bracing it against his shoulder, his expression one of shock. Sandra lay huddled and crying in a fetal position beneath the FTL console, as other crewmen looked on in horror.

"What... just happened." Isard asked, the shock of near death finally beginning to wane.

"She was a Cylon agent, though I don't know how it's possible. We better get our people back on board now, I have a feeling she set this whole thing up. It was her idea, after all." Summers picked up the phone, radioing Jack and his salvage teams. "Jack, recall everyone now."

"But there's so much more here!" He protested.

"The situation has changed." Summers replied simply.

"How so?"

"I think you'll need to find someone else to frak." Summers replied with a touch of sarcasm and a touch of guilt. He's going to blow up when he finds out what happened, the captain thought. For a moment, Summers suddenly wondered if Jack might be an enemy agent too, but such thoughts just led to paranoia. He was as taken as in as the rest, if not more. It was easy to fall for a nice body. "Just get everyone on board immediately. We suspect Cylon ships are on the way."

"Okay, Cap'n." Jack replied, without a hint of the turmoil that must be going on inside. Summers hung up the phone and turned to Isard.

"We'll need to do something about that." Summers added, pointing to the body staining the deck.

"Yeah... look... The way she just snapped his neck, the way she just moved so fast... never seen a man do that before..." Isard's brow furrowed in thought.

"What are you saying?" Sandra chimed in, her scientific curiosity finally overcoming her fear.

"I'm saying, I think this... was a Cylon." Isard replied grimly. "Why else would she aid an enemy that was exterminating mankind?" For her part, Sandra fell back into her chair with an air of resignation. Summers idly gulped down another ale, preferring to meet this knowledge with a bit of a buzz, despite the seriousness of the situation. It wasn't long before his earlier assumption was proven right. As the last of the salvage crew struggled on board, leaving behind equipment and useful wreckage, three Cylon basestars suddenly jumped in...


	3. Chapter 3

Light flooded the frigid space above Caprica, the brilliance of nuclear reaction impacting against the hull of the old battleship. Too late, point defense guns opened up, creating a small field of relative safety as the ship powered up. The missiles from the second salvo were quickly eliminated. Batteries opened fire for the first time in over 40 years, sending a steady stream of armor-piercing shells into the nearest baseship, damaging one of her spines with the deadly fire. Raiders were released by the hundreds, approaching the damaged battleship as her point defense guns struggled to find their mark. Missiles flew out from the ship, a spread spiraling into the nearest baseship, temporarily slowing its inexorable advance. Space was alive with death as the battle played out through the burned-out wrecks of the once-mighty Colonial armadas.

"FTL jump, get us out here now, anywhere, just turn the key." Summers screamed above the din of the one-sided battle. His ship was beginning to fall apart, as much from age as enemy fire, succumbing rapidly to the onslaught of three capital ships. A coolant line in the corridor blew open, flooding superheated gas into the corridor. Isard slammed the hatch shut just in time, puffs of steam vanishing around the seals. Alarms blared to life in CIC, even as the endless thud-thud of devestating impacts echoed throughout the ship. Sandra wasted no time, grabbing the key and twisting it with forcefulness. Dreadnought vanished into the unknown.

In that moment between life and death, disappearance from one point in space and reappearance elsewhere in the universe, Summers' mind began to fall into the void. Whether brought on by age combined with drink, or simple exhaustion, he felt himself spinning as the bridge stretched impossibly thin, like taffy. It was her. Ellison. As if she were alive again, here, in this very room. He saw the woman standing before him, smiling seductively. She spoke in that same voice, that manufactured sound he knew now to be artificial, something that came off an assembly line of flesh, bone and sex.

"You have your part to play in God's plan." The voice claimed with absolute assurance.

"No God controls my reality." Summers replied. The figure vanished without reply, but as reality began to compose around him again, the old captain felt the hollowness of his answer, the wrongness of it. Who was he to understand the Gods?

"Damage Report!" Isard yelled at no one in particular, falling into his military routine. For his part, Summers merely retrieved his tankard and refilled it from the ale keg, now laying on its side against the command console. Drink was a part of him, how would he survive when it was gone? "Now is hardly the time for drink. We have to figure out how much we were able to salvage, and how much was damaged."

"Heh. Well I'm not about to face it sober, that's for certain." Summers replied as a weary Jack found his way into CIC, Elena not far behind.

"What's going on, Cap'n, I don't..." Then he saw the bloodstains on the deck and met Summers gaze with an intensity the captain had never seen before. "You... killed her?"

"It, Jack. It." Summers answered. "It was a Cylon."

"You can't know that. That's blood, not hydraulic fluid there." Jack protested, his expression alternating between anger and shock. The old military man's thoughts juggled back and forth. He had just barely survived, and many of his men had perished. The airlock had closed only seconds before the nuke had gone off. Mixed emotions played in his mind, gratitude to the Gods that he breathed, anger for seeing the woman of his desire reduced to bloodstains etched in the metal by booted feet. But above it all, the nagging question... was she a Cylon? How could that even be possible?

"We know it." Isard added. "She killed one of my marines, right here, snapped his neck like it was made of paper, ripped my service pistol from my hand as if I were a child, a plaything."

"You have proof of this." Jack replied darkly.

"See for yourself," Summers began, pointing to the body of the dead marine as one of the officers dragged it off the bridge. "I have suspected something was wrong about her for awhile."

It was Elena who replied, incredulous. "This Cylon was a member of YOUR crew. How do we know you aren't in league with them?"

"Shut your frakking mouth." Isard answered. "The Captain here saved my life, and probably yours too, again."

"This is a military ship now. We have weapons. We need to strike back. These salvagers almost got us killed!"

"That's sir to you, frakwit. Get out of my sight." Isard replied.

"No. You're unfit for command. We don't take orders from civvies and Cylon pussy lickers." Elena's voice had acquired a terrible edge, and even as her words echoed in CIC, still punctuated by alarms, men stood from their stations, tempers rising.

"You have once chance to retract that statement." Isard's voice was in earnest, and his fingers flexed.

"Never, SIR." She emphasized the last word with heavy sarcasm. A few of her supporters gathered behind her as Isard glared at her with rage. Summers felt a headache coming on.

"Report to the Brig." Isard replied, with a few officers and most of the salvagers behind him.

Rather than continue to debate the subject, Elena simply punched him in the mouth. The fight degenerated quickly into a brawl with several of the colonial officers in CIC attacking each other in support of one or the other, though by some miracle no one started shooting. Jack jumped into the fray with obvious relish, releasing the pent-up rage for what had just transpired, a way of avoiding his terrifying thoughts. For his part, Summers simply refilled his ale and began to drink, dodging one officer as he was forcibly thrown over the weapons console. Sandra stared up from the communications console as she waved for attention, trying to stop the melee and get everyone's attention.

"I'm receiving a transmission from another ship." She yelled to no effect. "Excuse me, I'M TALKING TO ALL OF YOU." She screamed to deaf ears. Elena punched Isard in the gut and shoved him over the FTL console, nearly knocking the key loose as she dove over the console with delight, screaming a variety of obscenities. Jack grabbed her collar and flung her back as the Colonial Captain struggled to his feet. One of Elena's supporters leaped onto the ex-officer's back, clambering about, arms flailing everywhere, knocking the older man over. Isard reached for a sidearm that wasn't there, dislodged somehow during the initial moments of the fray. Seeing little choice, he ripped the offending officer from Jack's back, overpowered him and body slammed him onto the deck. As he stood over him, a singular blast echoed across the bridge.

The noise stunned everyone into inaction. Sandra stood in the middle of CIC, holding Jack's shotgun against her waist. "Now that I have your attention, we are receiving a transmission from nearby colonial ships." Summers just gulped his ale, belching loudly with obvious disrespect. "Wonderful." Sandra continued, sarcasm lacing her words.

"See what I'm talking about? Drinking on duty?" Elena replied as she stood, dusting herself off, glaring at Isard. "These salvagers are scum, mental deficients. We should toss them out the nearest frakking airlock."

"You mean, the captain drinking is any worse than mutiny?" Isard answered, pointing to the groaning men and women scattered about CIC. "That's what you just committed."

"Whatever, SIR." Elena replied with obvious hostility.

"Do I have to shoot one of you to get your attention?" Sandra wondered out loud. "I'm receiving a transmission from a ship calling itself the Scylla."

This finally roused Summers from dormancy. He struggled to his feet, staggering a bit with obvious intoxication. "Put them on the speakers."

"...unidentified warship. You are warned to stay back..."

"What?" Summers replied. "I must be drunker than I thought." He reached for the phone as Isard and Jack brushed themselves off. "Look, Scylla, I'm in no mood for more frakwits. If you'd prefer we leave you alone with the Cylons, that's your business."

"Wait."

"Oh, NOW you want to talk. Just what were you planning to warn us with anyway? Your ships aren't even armed." Summers added with satisfaction. There was silence on the other end for several moments before the voice returned.

"We were armed. Then came the Pegasus to save the day. Admiral Cain stripped us of people, parts and weapons. We would appreciate help, but only if you're not military."

"We have some military personnel on board, but this is an independent salvage ship. How many people do you have in total?" Isard chimed in, still glaring at Elena.

"Over 2,500 survivors, Cain took some, murdered others, left us for dead."

"I love how Colonials treat the people they are sworn to protect." Sandra added dryly, staring at Elena, who wisely kept silent. Some of the pilot's supporters visibly distanced themselves from her.

"We can accommodate that many, but only if you can earn your keep." Summers added. "And only if you can squeeze them into tight quarters."

"What are you doing?" Jack asked. "We can't feed, house and handle that many people."

"I'm thinking of salvage. Those ships still have structural components we can use to repair Dreadnought, and we could use the labor to salvage." Summers replied, covering the receiver.

"It's a gamble." Isard added, wiping some blood from the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, I know. We took a nuke in that exchange, and our damage control console doesn't even work. There's no telling how bad it is." Summers replied, releasing the receiver. "We are sending a representative over to speak with you."

"Say what?" The voice replied.

"Parley, Negotiate, Talk... whatever. You want to or not?" The old captain continued.

"Okay. Two men only. No weapons."

"Fine." Summers replied, hanging up the line.

"Certainly a paranoid lot, aren't they?" Jack added. His expression changed again as he stared at the bloodstains on the deck, further proof of the Cylon he had frakked. "Wouldn't mind if you handled this Cap'n, I need some of that Ambrosia."

"Want this back?" Sandra asked, handing the shotgun back to its owner, none the worse for wear. As Jack walked off, Sandra fell into deep thought, her brow furrowing as she frowned. What were the odds that a blind jump would take them straight into a fleet of colonial ships? As she glanced up, her eyes met the Captain's gaze, the moment of understanding passing between them. This was no coincidence, either it was the Gods, or something far worse. For all his ale, it was obvious the Captain's mind was just as frakked with worry.

**Day 2, Scylla, Deep Space Near The Colonies**

Dimly lit corridors stretched across the passenger liner, fluorescent lighting flickering randomly in the darkness. Wreckage littered the ship, carelessly strewn about without any discernible pattern. Wires dangled from the ceiling, sparking and flashing, briefly illuminating the dejected people who lined the ship, dirty and hopeless. By comparison, even Dreadnought was luxurious.

"Welcome Aboard." The words were spoken without emotion, the balding man's civilian uniform stained with blood and oil. "I was the Navigator. They took the Pilots. Useful for flying, I suppose. Didn't find the rest of us worth anything. What use is a Navigator out past the Red Line, right?"

"Admiral Cain did this?" Isard asked as Summers just shook his head without comment.

"Yeah. Shot some of our people too. I'd show you the recordings, but she took our cameras too." The man continued. "I suppose I've neglected my manners," he continued with sarcasm "I'm Paul Graystone."

"Any relation to THE Graystones?" Isard asked.

"Yeah, distantly. Not too closely, else I'd be rich... and dead like the rest of them." Paul added. "Look I don't feel like a family reunion or a chit chat. I need to do something here, these people have no food, water, or any hope of survival."

"Yeah, about that." Summers began. "We aren't exactly well off, but we have some provisions and a functioning ship."

"What's your price." Paul asked dryly. "There's always a price."

"A small one. We'll share what we have, you can come on board. But we need labor to help us salvage equipment and materials. And we need structural components from your ship to repair ours." Summers continued. "Oh, and we have ale. For now, anyway."

"So you're just going to strip us too, eh?" Paul just shook his head. "Not that we have much anymore."

"Not strip. Save. Salvage. You live. You work like the rest of us. We don't shoot anybody. Not a bad deal, I think." The Captain didn't have much patience for this lot, and what little he had was wearing thin, fast. "Take it, or we bail and leave you to whatever else you find out here. Your choice."

"Fine. But we go over first, no salvagers come on board our ships until all of our people are safe." Paul sighed in resignation. "And we won't be your slaves. Normal working shifts."

"What is this, a frakking labor union?" Summers replied as Isard's eyes widened. "You want some vacation time? Sick pay?"

"How about our dignity, frakwit." Paul answered angrily.

"Fine. Dignity too. Lets get this started." Isard replied hurriedly. Summers merely laughed in reply and started back towards the shuttle docked with Scylla.

"Odd one, that guy." Paul stated as he gestured to a few of the passengers.

"Yeah, but decent enough. So far." Isard replied. "These pirates have their own sense of right and wrong, curious though it is."

"Better than some of you Colonials." Paul glared at the officer with pent-up hostility and anguish. Graystone had obviously seen a great many things he couldn't unsee. To see your world destroyed was bad enough. To then be betrayed by your own defenders was beyond imagination.

"I'm not Admiral Cain." Came the simple reply. Isard couldn't imagine colonial troops firing on unarmed civilians, but Elena's comments came to mind again, along with the pain from one too many blows to the head. It was all too possible, he realized, and he was all that stood in the way of it happening again. Children lay huddled with their parents, dejected passengers sniffed back tears that had long since ceased flowing. The air stunk with sweat and ozone, the misery hovering like a blanket over a civilization that had, in its death throes, turned upon itself to survive. Like a dog gnawing off its own leg, men had turned on one another, leaving the remnants to the coldness of space.

Outside the viewport, the armored prow of Dreadnought came into view, gaping holes leaking atmosphere, scattered about the massive scorch mark which lay neatly at the center of the damage. Her batteries remained intact and her engines still pulsed with life. Two such impacts might have destroyed her, but one simply scarred her surface, giving her a fearsome visage. Isard knew in that moment that vengeance would come one day. Humanity had taken an immense blow, but it would survive to exact a price in blood, or oil, whichever the Cylons preferred these days.


	4. Chapter 4

Lights of activity surrounded the battleship, trying to repair the blackened, charred wounds that covered her hull. She was a giant, stirred to awakening by the battle scars she bore. Suited salvage techs were everywhere, welding, bolting and plating, readying her for a war she had never been meant to fight. Dreadnought drifted through space, a menace and a firm declaration that humanity wasn't quite finished.

In CIC her mixed crew busied themselves restoring the ship's systems, cleaning the decks of years of blood, booze and sweat. It was a truly daunting task even for the new help. Summers scratched at his chin, watching as the last stains from Ellison's artificial body were scrubbed away. No amount of cleaning could remove the offending memory from his mind. Sandra was there, rigging a still and cursing wildly, throwing a spanner against a console with a huff of frustration.

"Frak!" Sandra's quest for more drink had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Summers knew her as a brilliant but troubled engineer. All women had their share of troubles, but hers was worse than most. Yet given the current status of humanity in general, he could hardly resist frakking her. It was his duty, right? Time for procreation, to keep the species alive and all. That and there wasn't much else in the way of entertainment left.

Summers chuckled as he moved to sit, suddenly remembering that his chair had been removed and replaced with equipment that was actually needed. His routine had held him together those first few days after the event. But that routine was falling away now, like the contents of the last kegs of beer. Taking a pull from his tankard of rapidly diminishing ale, he leaned against one of the consoles, nodding to Isard in turn.

"I'm sorry about all that. Times are trying men's minds..." Isard explained, trying to smooth the bad blood developing between the salvage crew and the military survivors. "We need supplies, rations, more guns and ammunition... and I have no idea where we're going to get it."

"I do." Summers said simply, belching as if to punctuate his statement. Sandra's head peeked up over her mess of copper tubing as Jack's eyebrow inched up slightly.

"Please, by all means." Isard offered, his hands open in exaggeration. "Give us some of your supreme wisdom."

"Don't get smart with me, pup. You Colonials always had your cushy battlestars while were were out here in the shit. Yeah. Shit. I've dealt with nastier customers than you; Zarek's freedom fighters, Sagi' pirates, Tauron mobsters, you name it." Summers' voice took on an edge of barely controlled fury. "We're the ones that always clean up your political messes."

"Fine. But where are these mysterious supplies of yours?" Isard replied, avoiding arguing the topic.

"I'll give you the short version. Years back I was on the run from Zarek's freedom fighters, assassins, whatever you want to call 'em. They had me cornered good. I did a blind jump but used up most of my fuel. Wound up in the middle of nowhere, cruising on sublights for a few weeks when I ran into a mess from the first war. It was _Atlantia_, the old one from the first Cylon war. Some kind of battle went down there... anyway I tanked up on tylium from the wrecks and got a full load out of military-grade hardware. Got enough credits to buy this bucket, in fact." Summers explained.

"Why'd you never go back there, Cap'n? Had to be some money in it." Jack asked, curiously.

"It's a tomb. Something about that place... messes with your mind. Didn't get the vibe, you know?" The old salvager continued. For his part, Jack understood. Space was cold, unforgiving, and sometimes you just had to go by your gut. All deep space salvage crews knew that, and those who didn't take it to heart wound up dead, or worse.

"I remember reading about _Atlantia_ in flight school. She was a Dreadnought-class ship under construction when the battlestars were designed. Rather than halt construction, they modified her by adding flight pods and water recyclers. Some even called her the 'thirteenth battlestar' even though she was not as advanced as the actual twelve. Her battlegroup vanished on patrol near the end of the war... no one ever found any sign of her." Isard shook his head. "If you found her, you solved a 40 year old mystery."

"Yeah... suppose so." Summers answered. "Anyway, we should be able to salvage a good deal of supplies there, supposing no one else found her first." Something changed within him then, his brow furrowing in obvious worry. He even ignored Sandra's lustful gaze and she huffed in frustration again, returning to her still. He left the command deck without another word.

"There's something he's not telling us." Isard pointed out.

"Yeah. I wonder what has him spooked so much." Jack replied, but his mind was elsewhere too. The deck had been cleaned, but his mind was still frakked up. Ellison, a cylon? The whole thing had an air of incredulity that just blew his mind. The implications were scary enough. Cylons could inflitrate anywhere and anyone. But the fact that she or it had used him, frakked him and he never knew anything was more than most men could bear. The fact that he had fallen for her on another level just made it worse. The toaster had been very good at her job, indeed.

"You got the coordinates?" Jack asked, Isard only nodding in reply.

"Spin up the FTL." Isard ordered. Jack frowned at that too. The growing confrontation for control of the ship was only getting more urgent. Though Isard seemed relatively harmless and Elena was in the brig, someday there would have to be a real accounting.

**Day 16,** **Battleship Dreadnought, Deep Space, Unknown Location**

**Wreckage of Atlantia**

Lifelessness covered the battlefield, bodies and debris floating together in a sort of grotesque synthesis of man and machine. Atlantia lay at the center of the ghostly formation, one flight pod severed cleanly and the other hanging only by a few errant spars. Entire sections were blown open to space, charred metal blown inward by fearsome attack. Opposite from her, entangled in the remains of two colonial destroyers, was a basestar, cut clean in two along her center axis, similarly holed and torn. Cylon wreckage mingled with Colonial in haphazard form, the deaths of former enemies giving them a strange sense of unity.

Into this cold, dead place, Dreadnought materialized. Her running lights gave life to the remains once more, spotlights shifting through wreckage, illuminating corridors open to space, singling out the destroyed hulks of mark II Vipers and old-style Raiders. The frozen faces of men long dead shimmered in the roving lights, the lifeless eyes of model 005 cylons did not stir.

A single transport shuttle with armor hastily added to her frame bolted out into the remains, heading for the worn wreck of Atlantia. At her helm, Summers adjusted course slightly, dodging drifting remnants, caught in endless orbit over the lifeless, nameless, rocky planet below. Distant light shone through the window-plaz, the star too far away to give any real visibility to the wreckage, just darkened reflections and shadows. It was surprisingly serene here, faraway clouds of nebulous gas lighting part of the ecliptic in dim redness with distant stars shining brightly through them.

Summers knew exactly where to go, flying down the length of the Atlantia, matching her slow lateral spin precisely, coming close to an intact hatchway. He didn't even bother to check the seals, instead clipping the helmet on his spacesuit and checking the air supply. Jack and Isard silently followed his lead, nodding to each other in turn. Other salvage teams had been dispatched to other sections of the ship, but Summers had insisted on this site personally.

"I trust the two of you can be discreet." The salvager said through the coms. "There are things here, I'd rather no one else see."

"What happened here?" Isard asked with dark curiousity.

"That's a thing better seen, than said." Summers answered, reaching for his tool bag. "Let's go."

Inside the Atlantia, the corridors were a mess of dead men, destroyed centurions and corridors holed open to the stars. Here and there corpses floated gently, bumping up against walls and wreckage in almost random order. Through it all Summers ignored everything, making his way to CIC with the others in tow. It soon became obvious that something was different here.

One centurion had a blade stuck within what had once been a man, the frozen heart stabbed clean through the body. A neat bullet hole marked the spot where some colonial had destroyed the offending Cylon's CPU. Even in death, one could see the hatred in the Cylons, a determination to annihilate that remained even after the grave. Summers pushed the bodies aside and forced open the hatch to CIC, stumbling in.

Inside more men and machines floated, droplets of frozen blood drifting lazily through the command center. What had obviously once been a man of stature lay prone across the command information display, his rank insignia indicating that he had been in command. The man was pinned by two dead Cylons, each with hands frozen in the act of ripping his flesh.

"My Gods..." Isard whispered.

Summers didn't bother to reply. The old pirate captain set to work on one of the consoles, less damaged than the others, pulling a battery and some wiring from his tool bag. After a few moments, the console powered up, but with the air long gone from this place, no sound could be heard. Instead he just tapped the computer screen, playing back a recording from the forgotten battle.

Cameras positioned around the ship had captured elements of the battle, and it was obvious that what began as a conflict had become something far worse. Cylons could be seen tearing open corpses, harvesting organs, blood and body parts. Colonials were there, fighting them back until becoming corpses themselves. Explosions were everywhere as Atlantia continued to fight some unseen enemy, whole corridors exploding into nothingness, nuclear fire destroying everything.

"Frak me..." Jack could only say.

"Yeah.. there's more, but personally, I don't want to see it." Summers replied.

"They were.. harvesting organs? That explains a lot, you know." Isard added.

"That explains Ellison..." Jack answered solemnly.

"Let's just get what we came for. There's a lot of hardware here we can salvage, probably enough to get Dreadnought back into fighting shape." Summers added.

"Why didn't you just come here first? Why bother with that suicidal run into the colonies?" Isard questioned warily.

"I didn't want to come back here... but beyond that, something with Ellison never sat right with me. Part of me wanted to see what would happen." Summers replied. "Make sure none of the other teams come up here. It's best that this battle remain a mystery."

"Yeah..." Jack answered, turning his com to the channel the other salvage teams were on and marching off CIC. "Yeah.. give me teams in munitions... I need techs to remove the gun barrels... yes... I need a welding team to..."

As the ex-officer turned salvager droned off, Isard reached for the dead commander's dog tags, removing them reverently and placing them, in his pocket.

"You did your duty, sir." He whispered reverently. An image formed in the officer's mind just then, the thought of some distant future man taking his dog tags, murmuring something similar. Would there be a human race to remember him? To remember any of those who had fallen. His attention shifted again, and he was there, listening to the Captain ordering his salvage teams. Summers might not have been a military officer, or professional in any standard sense, but he was good at this. Contrary to Elena's self-serving desires, Isard knew they would need that talent to see them through to survival.

"I need some of your people to help me setup the weapons and remove the stuff in the armory. This ship probably has a lot of frozen rations too, and maybe some water equipment." Summers added simply. "The destroyers might have some supplies too, but we should focus on Atlantia for now. We might also be able to salvage some equipment from the dead Vipers out there, and some point-defense batteries. We're trying to arm our transport shuttles too..." He droned off, but Isard had stopped listening again.

He trusted the old salvager to find everything of value, it's what the man lived for. As a Captain in the fleet, Isard had a very different responsibility, to ensure the continuity of his species. If this battle was any indication, the Cylons had been planning the infiltration of the fleet for some time, since at least the first war. There was no reasoning with an enemy like this, there was no defeating them except to completely annihilate them. Part of him had hoped the Cylons would ignore the battleship, but he now realized that would never happen. He would be fighting them for the rest of his life, or theirs... there was no other option.

"Hey boys," Sandra commed in. "We've found some water recycling equipment in the intact flight pod. We need some serious manpower to get it out of here, though."

"Have some of our new refugees help." Summers replied. "It's time they earn their keep, especially if they want any water to drink."

"All right, Cap'n. Also we've found two intact rations lockers. Not sure how good this frakked up stuff is after forty years, but it's something." Sandra continued. "Give us about a week with this wreckage and we should be able to get the ship back in order, guns and all."

"Yeah, about that... I want double-shifts, around the clock. Lets not stay here any longer than we have to." Summers answered.

"Problem?" Isard asked.

"Nah... but you know, sometimes I wonder if this place is as dead as it seems." Summers added darkly.

"Think they'll come back?" Sandra chimed in. "Doesn't seem like they ever came back."

"Doesn't mean they won't." Summers answered, retrieving his tool bag and leaving CIC the way he found it, lifeless and black. Bodies bumped against each other in a dance choreographed for eternity. The console faded to black again, devoid of power, forever.


	5. Chapter 5

"Give up the fight and learn to surrender."

It was a voice all too familiar to him, the melodious feminine tones echoing through the corridors of his vessel, taunting him, driving him mad. Every dream was like this, an empty ship filled with bodies and that haunting, beautiful woman laughing. Again and again it was always the same, the cycle never ending, like the story of man and the stars. This time he reached for a gun, seeking her blood in a deadly game of cat and mouse. He hunted her, a predator stalking dangerous prey, in control of himself. There she was, Ellison, the Cylon monstrosity herself. His finger clutched the trigger like a lifeline as the gun clicked empty.

Captain Summers awoke with a start, his forehead drenched in sweat. As he slowly recovered his senses, he reached for the bottle of ambrosia, taking a long pull from the half-empty bottle. Truly, he wasn't sure which was worse, reality or the recurring dreams of that Cylon bitch. He was no stranger to nightmares, of course, living as he did on the very edge of civilized space, but these were something different. Death had followed in his wake many times, never quite finding him, but somehow this machine thing managed it every time. Still, life was a battle every man was fated to lose at some point.

Yawning briefly, he reached for his jacket, foregoing the usual luxury of a shower. Supplies were limited and there just wasn't enough water to go around. His salvage crew was never known for having a pleasing scent, but at this rate the ship would smell something like a cesspit if they didn't solve the water recycling problem. As if punctuating his thoughts, someone knocked lightly on the door, the rapping on the metal matching rhythm with the pounding headache in his skull.

"Yeah, it's open" He rattled off, his voice raspy.

Captain Isard stepped in, his uniform superbly pressed and immaculate. How he had managed that miracle, Summers couldn't say. He supposed military men had their own ways of spit and polish they could maintain even in a sewage treatment plant, if they had to.

"What's on your mind, Isard?" Summers asked warily. Conflict between the salvagers and the colonial survivors had been rather frequent and some part of him was just waiting for the inevitable hammer to drop.

"Wanted to discuss the command arrangements, sir." He spoke simply as Summers frowned. "I have an idea that might help us both."

"Go on." Summers answered simply as he shoved his boots onto his unwashed feet, his nose twitching in annoyance at the stench therein.

"Way I see it, this is your ship. But the colonials are my men. I'm figuring some kind of compromise, you say where we go, when we go there, command your salvage teams and all that." Isard continued carefully.

"And you? I hope you're not planning a coup, Captain." Summers' voice took on a dark edge.

"Nothing of the kind. I would command all military ops. If we're in battle, I give the orders. It's a matter of tactical experience. Everything else is up to you, when we're not fighting I'll follow your orders." Isard added. For a moment he let the silence linger, then continued. "Look, this isn't for my benefit really. Elena has a lot of supporters, not enough to throw us out an airlock but enough to cause trouble. This will shut them up. They won't feel like they are taking orders from a Civvy. No offense."

"I'm good with it, on one condition. We don't go start a battle without my say so. I don't want you all leading us on some damn crusade to annihilate the Cylons or some frakked up shit. Your men are yours, I don't want any part of them anyway, just keep them under control." Summers followed up with a swig of ambrosia, frowning at the slowly emptying bottle. He smiled for a moment and reached for a shot glass, pouring some of the amber liquid in and pushing it down the table towards Isard.

"Let's drink on it." The old captain smirked with amusement.

"I'm on duty..."

"Yeah, well your superiors aren't here to bust your ass. Your kind shake hands, fine and good. My kind, we drink to a deal. This trust shit, we've both got to work on it. You want to earn our trust? Drink with us, talk a bit. Besides, it's good liquor. When it's gone it's gone forever, so enjoy." Summers nodded briefly as Isard reached for the drink, clinking his shot glass with the old captain's bottle.

"To the colonies, may they rest in peace..." Summers said solemnly. The Colonial officer simply nodded in agreement.

…**...**

CIC was really beginning to shape up. The center console had replaced the old captain's chair and a bank of monitors had been installed above it. DRADIS readings swept across the monitors, the hum almost comforting to the colonials. Salvage techs were still working on some of the consoles, but to to the untrained eye, it almost look like the command center of a modern battlestar. Sandra knew the changes weren't just on the inside, either. _Dreadnought_'s full armaments had been nearly restored, eighteen kinetic mounts and countless point defense weapons had been reactivated. Her missile launchers had been resupplied and reloaded, though probably for the last time. Far beyond the wildest of expectations, two functional nukes had been discovered on the old Atlantia wreckage, giving the battleship some real teeth.

Pride swelled within Sandra, for the first time in almost a decade. Her parents had considered her a failure, a geek in a family of political figures, an embarrassment and a drunk. All of her life she had longed to be important, not as some politician's trophy or some rich guy's set of walking tits, but for her mind. It was ironic that the old world had to blow up for that to happen, but it had happened anyway. She tapped her still for the last drop of booze, swishing it around in her cup for a moment before downing it, enjoying the comfortable warmth before getting back to work. Summers walked in, his jacket unbuttoned, rubbing his forehead with obvious annoyance. As he saw her, he smiled slightly and stared with an air of primitive desire. Well, it was nice to be needed for one's mind, but the tits were a nice bonus to have when your entire species was on the verge of extinction.

"Mornin. I see you got something a bit better than coffee going on there." He smiled as he leaned against a console seat.

"It's not Caprican Ambrosia, but it'll get you trashed." She said dryly. "So what's the story on the toilet paper?"

"Would you believe Atlantia had functional nukes, good rations, but not a single roll of usable TP?" Jack laughed as he sauntered in, taking his station. The ex-officer had donned a uniform again, if only to mingle among the military survivors.

"Figures." Sandra frowned. "Good news is we were able to transfer some of the water recycling equipment from Atlantia. Some of it was smashed pretty good, but I think we can setup something rudimentary. Say, 75% efficiency."

"So no showers still. Well that stinks." Jack added.

"Tell me about it. This ship never exactly smelled like a flower field on Caprica, though. We'll get used to it." Summers rubbed his forehead again, looking up at Sandra's still. "Nice of you to set that up on the bridge."

"Figured we need it the most." Sandra answered, finishing her cup and frowning slightly at the aftertaste.

"The refugees on the lower decks would probably disagree. But frak them anyway, they can build their own damn booze-making device." The old captain answered. "Well not much else we can do here, get Isard up here, it's time we bail on this grave. This place still gives me the frakkin creeps."

…**...**

Model 005, serial number 34891-A was alive, or at least in the sense that an advanced multi-core CPU could be alive. Electrical current found its way along the motherboard, activating systems that had gone dormant long ago. Devoid of new input, unable to signal others, 34891-A had gone into suspend mode decades ago, conserving power for the time it might be considered useful. The centurion powered up, his red eye scanning the space around him for the source of his awakening.

Centurion 34891-A had been cast out into space when his basestar had been destroyed in battle with _Atlantia_'s battlegroup, leaving his otherwise intact body floating uselessly in the depths, unable to maneuver, and there he had remained for over forty years. Power reserves had fallen greatly in that time, and the centurion didn't even risk a full self-check. His body rolled uncontrollably but finally his eye latched on to the thing which had triggered his reactivation. Sensors had detected a Dreadnought-class Colonial battleship near the edge of the debris field obviously engaged in salvage operations.

That data didn't compute. Battleships were not salvage vessels, and assuming the war between men and machine still waged, it would be a waste to use a capital ship in such a manner. Something must have changed in the intervening years. His mind immediately sought our other centurions that might be nearby, but none responded. When he had gone into suspend mode, there were a few other surviving Cylons nearby, but they must have run out of power long ago. With no method of attacking the Colonial vessel and no means of escaping his floating prison, 34891-A activated his long range transmitter. Perhaps there were Cylon vessels nearby. There hadn't been forty years ago, but with Colonials operating in this region again, it was remotely possible that Cylon vessels might be within reception range, looking for the battleship.

"Model 005, Serial Number 34891-A reporting to any Cylon forces in sector 654-G. Colonial battleship present in area, Dreadnought-class, engaged in salvage operations." The centurion broadcast the message across space and seeing little point wasting any additional power, shutdown non-critical systems again, suspending himself to wait for when he might be needed again.

"FRAK! What the hell do you mean the FTL's broke?" Summer screamed, his previously good nature melting away with red-faced frustration.

"You know, it hadn't been used or even maintained in forty years. Quite honestly, I'm surprised it's worked this well so far." Sandra's pride turned to annoyance as she stared at the monitor.

"Can it be repaired?" Isard asked calmly.

"Yeah. It's an alignment problem. Most FTL drives have to be aligned periodically, and this hasn't seen an realignment since she was decommissioned. Give me say a dozen techs and a few hours, and we can get on our merry frakkin way." Sandra answered sarcastically.

"Godsdamn crap. Alright, I'll get you your techs. Jack, I need you on this one, get your best people. I don't need to tell you how bad being stranded is right now." Summers ordered.

"Nah, pretty sure that's obvious, Cap'n." Jack answered, turning over the tactical panel to one of Isard's men. For his part, Isard frowned, glancing at the DRADIS with sudden worry. He grabbed the phone and held it to his mouth, barking out orders to the surviving fighter jocks in the battleship's small hangar bay.

"...yes, I know how many Vipers we have. Launch them all, I need a CAP right now. One ECM Raptor. Get a move on, people." Isard ordered. He wiped the perspiration from his brow and glanced over at Summers. "Sir, we need to be ready if the Cylons should..."

"I'm not an idiot, Isard. I'd have said the same frakkin thing if you hadn't beat me to it." Summers interrupted. "I don't have all your fancy training, but hell, space trains people well enough anyhow. You might want to launch our makeshift gunboat too. And Helm, give me full sublight speed away from the wrecks, I don't care what direction." The colonial officer nodded in reply, reaching for the phone again...

"Picking up a short EM burst, some kind of transmission, I think. Can't understand it, though." Isard's comm officer spoke up.

"Source?" Summers asked suspiciously.

"I don't know, somewhere in the debris field, I think." The officer's voice was confused.

"Probably some machinery in the wreckage. We messed with a lot of stuff out there, some if might still have some power." Isard offered.

"Right..." But Summers couldn't shake the worry. There was a reason he never came back here even when things were good. The place just didn't sit right with him, as if it wasn't quite dead. That instinct of his had saved him many times before, but he had ignored it this time. As he stared at the FTL readout, he knew there would be trouble, as certainly as he knew that thing from his dreams was still out there someplace, watching him. Sandra's swill offered only temporary reprieve from the lingering uneasiness, and none at all from the nagging headache.


	6. Chapter 6

Red dots spread across the DRADIS display like a cloud of angry insects swarming out from their hive. It took Captain Isard a moment to understand what we was truly seeing. It was as if the entire debris field had suddenly become a living thing, a deadly predator bent on blood. Raiders emanated from the basestar that had just jumped in, flying outward in a steady stream, filling the ancient battlefield with the din of battle once more. The angry mob of enemies drove towards them with singular genocidal purpose.

The officer was no stranger to combat, not anymore. _Zeus'_s last, desperate stand in the colonies weighed heavily on his mind. Perhaps a true battlestar could fight a baseship on something like even terms, but this ancient vessel could only delay the inevitable, and even then, not for very long.

"Helm, X axis rotation, 45 degrees, bring dorsal batteries to bear, launch a full barrage of flak rounds. Standby, ventral batteries, load armor-piercing. All Vipers to take shelter behind the flak field, defend the ship from stragglers." Isard ordered calmly, showing no signs of the fear he felt, not for himself, but for his entire race.

"Sandra, how's the FTL coming?" Summers asked, ignoring the battle for the moment.

"Need another hour Cap'n." Came the reply. The old captain frowned and took a pull from his tankard. The booze always took the edge off

"We don't have an hour. The Cylons have found us."

"How?"

"It doesn't matter. I don't care if you blow the FTL engines in the process, get us the hell out of here." Summers bellowed, his raspy voice giving way to a deep booming. "What's your plan?" He asked Isard, his attention fixed on the DRADIS console as he nodded slightly, honoring the division of command for now.

"We only have a few flak rounds. We burn a hole in those attacking raiders, hopefully whittling them down enough so that our Vipers and point-defense can keep them busy. At that point it's us versus the basestar." Isards voice wavered with obvious uncertainty, punctuated by the impact of a missile against the battleship's prow.

"We won't last long against that firepower. I know these old Dreadnoughts were woefully lacking in point defense." Summers replied, shaking his head.

"Yeah. I figure we have five minutes, tops. At least they can't infect our computers, like they did to _Zeus_." Isard reached for the phone. "Patch me in to Stalker" The comm officer nodded in reply. Why Elena chose that particular callsign, Isard didn't know, but the fighter jock certainly had enough mental problems to justify it. Nonetheless, there was no one else he would rather rely in a Viper cockpit.

"You're on."

"Elena, time for your jocks to prove their worth. We're almost out of flak rounds. Circle underneath us, leave basestar to us." Somehow Isard was glad Elena was left as the senior pilot. She was an uncooperative, impetuous blowhard, but she knew how to run a squadron. If anyone could run this haphazard squadron of misfit survivors, it would be her. He was about to explain the situation to Summers when he noticed the old captain had vanished...

Dreadnought glided through space as the raiders swarmed underneath, targeting the newly reactivated batteries. Missiles flew out from their forward-swept wings, closing in on the battleship's offensive firepower. A dozen Vipers appeared from behind the ship's DRADIS shadow, surprising the raiders and scattering their formation. Bullets lanced out into space, reaching for the salvo of missiles, clearing them only moments before impact. Point defense cannons opened up everywhere as the Cylon fighters scattered in all directions, tracer rounds reaching for their crimson eyes. Dozens of raiders vanished in puffs of light and explosions of metal and flesh.

Yet more returned to take their place, threatening to overwhelm the small squadron of defenders. A Cylon missile clipped one of the Vipers, knocking it off axis and shutting down its engines. Fire broke out within the cockpit as the tortured screams of its pilot were cutoff by static. Elena cursed and drove her fighter forward, trying desperately to clear the new Cylon formation before they could finish the job. Raiders swarmed over and around her, more than a dozen of the Cylon fighters surrounding her, carpeting space with the flashes of tracer rounds.

She always knew she would die out here someday, it was something all Viper jocks had to come to terms with. Her voice let out a war whoop, diving forward as her squadron mates took off around her, each trying desperately to win the unwinnable. A raider caught between her sights and she thumbed the trigger with relish, disintegrating the enemy, parts raining down upon her Viper as she blasted through the debris field. Behind her, the raiders settled into a pattern, forcing her this way and that, trapping her between steady streams of fire. They had her, and she knew it.

"Elena, bank right on my signal."

"What? Who is this?" She heard herself speak the words, but all her attention was focused on survival.

"Nevermind that, bank in 3... 2... 1... MARK."

Elena decided to give it a go, what did she have to lose? She was dead anyway. Kicking in the burners, she shifted her Viper rapidly to the right, nearly losing consciousness with the severe G's she was exerting, pushing the limits of her fighter. A large blur passed overhead, sending tracer rounds everywhere. The salvagers' transport shuttle blew by at high speed, outfitted with scrounged up point-defense cannons and missile launchers. Metal flew outward from the gunboat in seemingly haphazard order, annihilating a pair of raiders and pushing the rest back. A wave of missiles blew out of the launcher, destroying more raiders as the Vipers rallied around the makeshift screening ship.

"Next time you insult my people, remember that I saved your fancy fleet ass." Elena finally recognized the voice. It had to be Summers piloting the gunboat. As much as she despised the man, grudging respect was forced upon her. She just grunted in reply, her eyes fixing on a fleeing raider, blowing it apart with a smile.

"Now let's clear a frakking path." He added as the Vipers formed up around him, pushing the raiders back towards their mothership. Weaving around the underside of the massive battleship, the raiders fled rapidly, directly into a salvo of explosive rounds from _Dreadnought. _Several more were destroyed before altering course, avoiding the long distance salvos traded back and forth between the battleship and the basestar.

"Summers, what the hell are you doing out there?" Isard's voice came over the comm channel.

"I'm a dirty civvy and a pirate, remember? This is my kind of fight, grit, fingernails and metal. You pay attention to yours. Don't get too used to it, I want my ship back in one piece." Summers admonished as the basestar began to close range. The Cylons had apparently given up trying to overwhelm the battleship with fighters alone.

Salvos became more fearsome, a wave of missiles blowing loose several armor plates from the battleship's spine. A wave of armor-piercing kinetic rounds tore clean through one of the basestar's blades, knocking loose an entire cloud of debris. Regrouping, the raiders turned on their pursuers, a missile destroying one of the Vipers in a blaze of fiery fury. Summers piloted the gunboat directly into the fray, the vessel's cannons destroying a pair of raiders before taking a solid missile hit topside.

"Summers, you're leaking air topside. I think you lost some armor plating too." Elena reported automatically, twisting around the shuttle to engage the raiders starting to swarm the gunboat's defenses. More missiles broke through Dreadnought's point-defense, going up center-mass and knocking out one of her primary batteries.

"Radiological alarm! They're switching to nukes!" Elena screamed. A trio of missiles launched outward from one of the basestar's undamaged blades, angling towards _Dreadnought _with deadly intent. One of the Viper pilots, heedless of the danger, twisted and turned through the battle, tracer rounds reaching for the offending missiles even as several raiders angled on his position. The battleship's point-defense cannons knocked out one of the offending missiles and the insane pilot bagged another before the last missile passed the defense envelope. Undeterred, the Viper jock threw his fighter into a tight lateral turn, ramming the missile dead on in a suicidal plunge. Light was everywhere, blinding Cylon and human alike as the tiny Viper was turned to particulates and metal vapor.

"Godsdamn! That was Dogger. He's frakkin gone! That insane motherfrakker!" Elena yelled over the com channel.

"He just saved all of our asses." Summers observed. For a moment the fighting died down, Cylon and human alike trying to get their bearings and restart their shattered electronics. The EM pulse from the explosion wrought havoc upon the gunboat's rigged systems. The steady stream of cannon fire died down and the advantage passed over to the raiders once more.

"My weapons are down. No time to fix them. Isard, tell me you have some good news?" Summers bellowed in the com.

"Sandra just gave us the green light. We're turning our prow towards the basestar, should give you some cover getting into the hangar bay. I hope." Isard's voice was grim, with good reason. Unlike a battlestar, combat landings were basically impossible in the cramped hangar bay. Landing was a more complex process, requiring one to slow down before entry. A pilot might as well paint a bullseye on their ass before trying to land in a battleship.

"Get your asses in front of me, Elena. My ship's still got good engines and some armor. I can take a few hits, you can't." Summers replied as the Vipers formed up in front of the gunboat.

"They're about to fire off more nukes. Hurry the frak up." Isard yelled, his composure cracking as the seconds ticked away...

The remaining Vipers settled in pretty quickly, but it seemed as if the entire Cylon armada was behind Summers. A pair of hits registered on his DC panel. Engine power fluctuated and armor tore loose from the shuttle, exposing vital components and leaking air everywhere. The old captain's hands were dancing over the controls, it felt no different from the days he had spent fleeing Zarek's freedom fighters, dodging fire here and there, praying to the Gods that death would be deferred for another millesecond. Another missile smashed into the rear panel, disabling the main engine and blowing the tylium fuel burning in the nozzle like a rocket, propelling the wrecked gunboat forward at incredible speed.

Somehow Summers managed to steer the wreckage into a general alignment with the hangar bay but there seemed to be no way to slow down in time. He rotated the wreck about with the attitude jets and tried to restart the shattered engines. Of course they were burnt out, but the fuel lines were still working and oxygenated tylium fuel sprayed over the still simmering nozzle. Flames shot everywhere and he was suddenly flying the ship backwards, trying desperately to slow down and hoping he would make the hangar bay. His head hit the console as the gunboat slammed into something, and all was black...

"_Hello, Cap'n." Ellison's voice dripped with sex, shifting across the shimmering surface of a Caprican __sea, where he had grown as a boy._

"_You." It was all he could say. What else would one say to a thing? A construct of flesh and data?_

"_Me? No, I think you have the wrong idea."_

"_Whatever." Summers replied without interest, wondering just how he got here, to this illusion of a world simmering in nuclear cinders._

"_You have your part to play. So do the others, of course. But lets not concern ourselves with them, right?" The Cylon temptress whispered in his ear, her leg rubbing against his. Suddenly, Summers felt frozen, unable to move or even speak._

"_That's so much better, isn't it? Time to listen." She continued. "God has a plan for you. You should be flattered that he chose you for this."_

The headache was back. Booze, Cylons or both, Summers couldn't decide. There were people surrounding his bed, someone attending him with an obvious lack of talent for the medical profession. As his eyes focused, he was surprised to see Elena hovering over him, sewing up a particularly long gash on his calf. That was when the pain began to register and he winced violently.

"Stay still. Frakkin civvies..." Elena muttered as Isard walked in.

"Elena here is the closest thing we have to a doctor." Isard added respectfully.

"I have a basic medical training." She muttered, obviously not too confident of her abilities in that department. "Maybe this makes us even." She added, closing the last of the stiches.

"Not a chance." Summers replied. "But thanks. Anyone got a drink? This hurts like hell."

"You did some frakked up flying out there, Cap'n." Jack's voice echoed from around the corner as he stepped in. "Where the hell did you learn all that?" The ex-colonial handed Summers a flask of Sandra's Swill, as they were calling it.

"Ever tried to deal with Tom Zarek? You learn a lot in a hurry." Summers took a long pull from the flask, hoping it would ease the pain somewhat. "What's left of the shuttle?"

"Not a whole lot. But we're still here." Isard answered quickly.

"How many did we lose?"

"Four pilots. A few of the refugees were killed when one of the A-frames gave way, maybe twenty. We're still checking on that." Isard answered.

"Just where the hell are we, anyhow?"

"No idea, Cap'n. Sandra's still in CIC trying to sort it out. She pulled a blind jump to who knows where. We're outside Colonial space altogether thought, that much is certain." Jack answered, cutting off Isard.

"Right... Another day in frakkin paradise. Well we need water and repairs, I imagine. Time to start looking for a nice little planet." Summers ordered pointedly, throwing his legs to the edge of the bed.

"Wouldn't recommend walking too much on that." Elena added. "No way I'm sewing that back up if you rip it open. You fight well for a pirate, but you're not my commander, I don't owe you squat." She huffed angrily and stomped off.

"She's got some major frakkin issues..." Jack pointed out unnecessarily.

"She just doesn't like owing me her life." Summer laughed, but his smile faded quickly as his thoughts took a darker turn. They were truly alone out here, with no support, no plan, no purpose other than survival. "We need a plan, somewhere to go, something to do."

"There's booze and babes." Jack answered.

"Yeah. Cylons to think about too." Isard added. "They'll be looking for us, you know."

"Frak them. We got ourselves a ship full of techs, sure they aren't the most.. agreeable bunch, but we can do a lot with that. You know, rebuild..."

"On the colonies? It'll be crawling with toasters." Isard pointed out.

"No. Frak the colonies, frak the toasters. I'm thinking something older. You all might not believe it, but my father was a priest. You know, the tribes of Kobol and all that..." Summers rambled. "I won't bore you with the story, but most of us believe Kobol is a real place."

"Yeah, Cap'n, a place the good book warned us to stay the frak away from." Jack replied.

"See, I'm hoping the Cylons have the same idea. It's a planet we know is habitable, or at least was at some point." Summers continued. "We find it and figure out what to do from there, warnings from the scrolls be damned."

"No one knows where it is. There were rumors, before the first war, that expeditions were sent out to find it, but none ever returned. We don't even know if it's on the same side of the frakkin galaxy. It's crazy." Isard shook his head, but something had changed within him, he almost found himself wanting to agree with the old salvage captain. The idea was crazy, but the pirate had a point. They did have a ship full of crazy techs and salvage equipment. It was a good mix to try and rebuild something resembling civilization.

"Well, Isard... you have a better idea?" Summers asked rhetorically.

"I sure as hell don't." Jack interrupted, draining his flask with enthusiasm.


	7. Chapter 7

"_How often have you sailed in my dreams... Your dreams are my awakening."_

"_What nonsense is this?" Summers' voice wavered as he stared at the burning towers of Caprica City, the cinders and ash of its inhabitants falling from the stormy skies. Out there was a dive bar he remembered from his youth, afire and melting into the radioactive wreckage. Beyond that was the slummy housing development on the outskirts of the city, now nothing more than ashes._

"_It's your future, Thomas. Millenia from now they will write about you and the holy journey across the heavens." It was Ellison, seductive as always, taunting him with a hint of the figure beneath._

"_Make sense, toaster." He quipped, reaching his hand out to catch the falling flakes of charred blackness._

"_I'm no toaster. Perhaps I am an angel from God? Or maybe you're just losing your mind, bit by bit, piece by tiny piece." Her fingers traced along his forehead._

"_Are there more like you?_

"_Many look like me... but many don't. I wonder if you would know a 'toaster' if you saw one?" The question was certainly a valid one. He had no answer to give her. Did it even matter anymore?_

"_This is a cycle to be repeated throughout the cosmos, again and again... Always the same, always different." Her voice was soft and seductive, carrying across the silent orange death extending across the horizon. That flowing red dress was one with the wind, melding into the image of a great Cylon eye, wavering back and forth... and back again. The pendulum of man and machine continued as it always had..._

**Beyond the Red Line**

_Dreadnought_ was herself again. It was as if the ship knew she had returned to truly active duty. Though she bore fresh scars, her menacing appearance was only enhanced by them. Fresh armor plates salvaged from the wreck of _Atlantia_ were mounted in critical areas. New point defense batteries had been installed all over the ship, giving her much greater coverage than she had originally boasted. Forty years of experience with battlestar design had affected the work the salvage teams and military survivors had done, giving her two extra primary batteries and over fifty new point-defense mounts. Two of her long-range missile tubes had been reopened and stocked with the salvaged nukes.

Though her exterior boasted the most updates, her interior had been altered too, giving her a limited ability to reclaim water, produce basic Viper and cannon ammunition and hopefully produce some usable rounds for the main guns too. Welding and manufacturing equipment was everywhere and even the new refugees were motivated to help. Summers sighed with frustration knowing that even these new changes were not enough for long-term survival, but they were at least a step in the right direction.

"Sandra, you have the numbers on our foodstuffs and water supply?" He asked simply.

"Yeah. Not so good. The rations we scavenged will last awhile, say 8 or 9 months... but the water will run dry in around two months, tops. Got some more booze, though." She took a swig from her flask distractedly. "You know everyone always said 'Sandy, that's a nasty habit you got there.' But I say it's the end of the world. They're dead and I'm still drinking. Frak 'em all."

"I'll drink to that." Jack replied, unscrewing his flask and taking a pull before munching on some of the hard, compressed food rations. They were disgusting, and he nearly puked it back up, but food was food. "Gods these are worse than I remembered."

"Never had them myself," Isard began. "The newer rations actually taste something like food."

"I don't care either way. Wash it down with booze, I say." Summers added. "The water problem is a big one. Only place I can think of to tank off is the colonies, and I don't think we could get a fix on the colonies to jump back, assuming we even wanted to."

"We're outside of charted space, but I do know some colonial fleet elements made it out this far during the first war. All I know is there are some planets out here with supplies, tylium, water and such things... no idea where to look for them, though. We're way beyond the Red Line now," said Isard, scratching his chin.

"How's the fuel situation, Sandra?" Summers asked.

"We're swimming in tylium right now. Frak, we were fully loaded before scavenging from the wrecks. We had to build some new tanks just to hold all of the salvaged fuel. The ship could fly for years off of this crap." She replied mechanically. Summers stared at her for a few moments, his eyes staring into her soft blue orbs, then traveling down her neck and across her ample bosom with lust. For her part, she just rolled her eyes, obviously not drunk enough at the moment.

"So water and something edible... you know, Cap'n there are no fancy Caprican restaurants out here." Jack added, his voice dripping with sarcasm before turning to a different subject. "Can't say I miss them fancy joints, but man.. what I wouldn't give for a strip club."

"Seriously, our civilization had been destroyed, and the only thing you miss is strip clubs?" Isard glared at him for a moment before chuckling lightly. "You see one pair of tits you've seen 'em all."

"Ahem..." Sandra coughed. "I'm still here you know."

"Me too." Elena added, walking onto CIC with obvious disdain. Summers' eyes gravitated to her lithe body despite her obvious personal hatred for him. "Captain, sir, you wanted to see me?" She stated simply, subtly mocking her commanding officer. At least she was obeying orders now, though, however unhappily.

"Yes, Lieutenant. What's the situation on our squadron?"

"Well, sir, we're down to seven Vipers maybe eight if these salvage guys can part together one out of the scraps. We have eight Raptors, all damaged to varying degrees from the evacuation of _Zeus. _No idea about those gunboat shuttles this trash has been rigging together..."

"You mean the gunboat that saved your pretty little ass?" Summers laughed and took a pull from his tankard. Elena ignored the mocking voice pointedly, but didn't deny it either.

"We need the Raptors to do some scouting for us. Check out all the nearby systems, see if there is any water available. I can't stress it enough." Isard ordered. "Get your best pilots together and let's start scouting the systems on this chart... And I'd avoid making trouble. You can always go back in the brig, you know."

"Oh yes, very nice. More brig time for the lady, eh? Like seeing a girl behind bars?" Elena quipped.

"That's _sir_ to you, Lieutenant," said Isard, sternly.

"Yeah? Sir of what? It's not like the there are any Admirals or even Commanders left out here." Elena's hostility grew, her cheeks turning red with pent up rage.

"I'm here, Stalker. Try me, please." Summers motioned towards his sidearm. "Where'd you get that callsign anyway?"

"Basic flight. 'Cause I'm a sneaky sort of bitch." Despite the vitriol, Elena left it at that. Isard had confiscated her sidearm on general principle after here mutinous behavior. But the battle with the Cylons convinced him to return her to limited release duty. She was too good of a pilot to leave her in hack forever. Nevertheless the situation weighed upon him. It was proof that even his position as the military commander was tenuous at best. Everything all depended on cooperation. Petty politics could collapse the fragile alliance of salvage pirates and officers at any moment.

"Good for you. You better be sneaky, if you're gonna threaten me." Summers replied

"Hey all of you, save it for the frakkin Cylons. Plenty of them to kill, destroy or whatever." Sandra pointed out.

"I'm all for that." Jack agreed, holding his shotgun in one hand. "But if you want to try your luck, pilot, you know where to find me." Feeling outmatched, Elena beat a hasty retreat from CIC. It was obvious from her mannerisms, however, that she'd be back.

"On another note, Paul Graystone, the unofficial spokesman for the refugees, wants to setup some kind of meeting. As he put it, he doesn't want any 'frakkin military dictators' ordering him around." Isard added, reaching for the phone.

"Sounds like Paul all right. Hell, next he'll tell me the dogs want a say," said Summers. "The smaller the anthill, the more who want to climb to the top."

"Wouldn't surprise me." Jack quipped, rubbing his forehead. "Sandra, this swill of yours is terrible for hangovers."

"Yeah, well if you got something better, I'm all ears." She began. "Besides, it's not my problem you're not man enough to handle some real liquor."

"What a lady you got there, Cap'n." Jack laughed.

Summers tried to follow the conversation, but soon lost interest. His mind reflected back to his dreams and the words of that mechanical woman stuck in his mind. Were there other Cylons on board and how could he tell one apart from a human? Was there anyone he could trust anymore? A part of him knew the toasters would find _Dreadnought_ again, and next time they would be coming in greater numbers. Though the battleship had finally been made worthy of combat again, she couldn't stand alone against the entire Cylon fleet, especially if enemies were already aboard her...

**Unknown Planet, Outside Charted Space, Raptor 4, One Month Later**

Elena, callsign Stalker, huffed with annoyance, her throat still parched from her meager water ration. That gutless Captain Isard she'd been stuck with didn't have the testicles to depose the idiotic drunken salvage captain, Summers and toss the useless refugees out the nearest airlock. Humanity was almost extinct and this was no time to follow the leadership of same fool scavenging waste of water. On the other hand, she grudgingly accepted his fighting ability. Somewhere deep in her mind, she understood that she owed the man her life, but it didn't make the current situation easier to bear. Still, most of the men were with Isard and Summers, but that could change very quickly. She had her methods, of course, and most of them were at least somewhat fun.

The pilot didn't have any compunctions against using the body the Gods had seen fit to bless her with. If they didn't want her to use it to her advantage, they shouldn't have given it to her in the first place. She banked the Raptor slightly, dodging some debris stuck in orbit over this underwhelming rock, glancing at her monitor from time to time. There were only two qualified ECM operators, and she was one of them, saddling her with double duty as bus driver and scan monkey. Her qualifications were further proof in her mind that she should be leading this little escape from the colonies, not some drunken, barely competent salvage roughneck.

A singular beep echoed, distracting her train of thought. She almost jumped out of her seat with surprise. The scanners were registering pure water down there. It wasn't as if she hadn't hoped for it, but the odds were pretty terrible. She figured they'd never find an easy source, but here was a planet full of water ice right beneath her Raptor. Well she'd get the credit for the find, and that wouldn't hurt her popularity among the military survivors. As she swooped down for a closer look, flipping on her cameras, she could almost imagine the look on Isard's face...

…**...**

"What do you mean, someone's already been here?" Asked Isard bluntly. It had bothered him enough to extend Elena grudging credit for the fortunate find. Not that he had any issue with giving credit where it was due, but the devious pilot would parlay it into her own political gain. It was a wonder she wound up in the fleet instead of the legislature. Then again, her questionable sanity and tendency to insult everyone she didn't like didn't win her too many friends outside of her inner circle.

"I did an atmosphere flyby of the most promising ice sheets, and I'm telling you there were definite cut marks on the ice. Artificial, judging by the straightness of them." She smirked and produced the recon photos. Nature didn't just produce lines like that...

"Cylons?" Inquired Jack, leaning over the command console, staring at the snapshots.

"What do machines need with water?" Asked Sandra, adjusting her bra strap as Summers sauntered in behind her.

"Well.. if there are any more like... what we encountered..." Jack offered, wincing slightly at the offending memory of the Cylon he'd frakked.

"Maybe. Seems like a long shot, though. They wouldn't need to cut up ice on a crappy rock to get a drink. More likely, there are other survivors lurking about somewhere. We know _Pegasus _survived at least for a little while, maybe this was their work," said Summers. The words from his dreams echoed in his mind, like a hangover you just couldn't shake. It fit. There could be a whole fleet of escapees out there somewhere, just as screwed _Dreadnought_'s crew, just as lost out in the depths.

"I say we risk it. No water means we die. Going for this water means maybe some Cylons come knocking, but probably not." Sandra pointed out simply.

"I'm just as worried _Pegasus_ might show up if she's still around. After what she did to that refugee fleet..." Jack offered.

"Look, water is life. Besides, all of you idiots need a frakking shower. May look nice in here but Gods does it smell." Summers chuckled slightly before his expression soured again.

"These frakked up old rations aren't helping any." Jack pointed out. "You could hook my ass up to a Tylium tank, as bad as this is getting."

"So we good?" Isard inquired, but the statement was more of a confirmation than a question. As a military man, the young Captain was far more preferable than Elena and her cronies, but Summers didn't care for the cavalier way the officer just assumed he always knew the answer. The man was decent enough, but wouldn't have lasted two minutes in the salvage world. Not without a punch in the face sometime or another, anyway.

"Yeah, small teams though. If we need to bail out of here in a real hurry, it would be nice not to be stuck recovering teams or abandoning people," Summers said. His gut wasn't warning him of anything, but it never hurt to maintain some caution. His eyes gravitated back towards the recon photos. As a salvage spacer, he recognized the drill marks and the general patterns. This was mining equipment adapted as cutting tools, wielded by people somewhat unfamiliar with the machinery. It was a story he'd seen time and time again in improvised salvage yards like his own. You used whatever equipment was around. It wasn't _Pegasus_, unless she had run across a mining vessel somewhere along the way, which seemed unlikely. It could only mean there were other survivors out there. Ellison's face was there in the back of his mind, lurking like a shadow in his awareness, taunting him.

"_...even as the twelve tribes of Kobol joined the caravan of the heavens to the new lands, did the thirteenth tribe settle upon Earth. Alone, they were, for no others were to follow them. And the cycle of time started again in their new homes, each the same as before, each destined for the fate of all men..."_

The quote from the scrolls echoed in his mind and he knew the words for what they were. All of the believers remembered the cycle of time, that everything must repeat eventually. Certainly his father hadn't omitted that from his education, even if he had given Summers little else. And now, here they were, alone in this universe, a single ship fleeing from a machine empire. It was not so different from that long-lost thirteenth tribe, perhaps time truly did repeat in its own convoluted way...


	8. Chapter 8

"_Faces and names, places and games. Always the same, always different. One shall find a new home and the other shall return to the Origin, there to lie until He awakens again," said the Hybrid._

"_Places I have seen, but shall never stand upon. Places you have been, but shall never step on. I have seen the faces of Men, and they are the same. Missile Salvo Destroyed. Readying second wave. End of Line."_

He didn't have a name. Such designations were unnecessary for Him; everyone of importance knew precisely who He was. The One model's old features twisted in frustration as he contemplated the battle stretching out before him through the basestar interface. The costs of this war were beginning to mount, even for the Cylon armada. Beyond the hull of his command ship, one of his escorting basestars exploded in a shower of metal and biological debris, and still this damned Hybrid spouted poetic nonsense, oblivious to the material destruction outside. A Six and a Three began debating the next course of action, but it didn't matter to One. They could babble endlessly, those two, and come to no meaningful conclusion.

"Will you two shut up?" He said.

"Our ships are falling apart out there. We need to break _Ares' _defenses; so far her point defense has remained solid." The Three pointed out.

"Every basestar we lose will take years to replace." Six agreed.

"And just what, exactly, do we need more warships for? We have enough left to eliminate thestragglers." One's sarcastic voice obviously grated on these two, but that was the nature of being more enlightened, wasn't it? "So we lost a baseship. Let's just fly out the white flag and give up, right? Look, the key to this battle is that cloud of Vipers keeping our Raiders busy. We kill them, and this problem goes away."

Outside, the escaped battlestar _Ares _was furiously pounding away at the barrage of missles the baseships sent towards her at regular intervals. Though the first attack had damaged _Ares'_ FTL drives, stranding the Colonial vessel, the second attack wave had been stopped and the Colonials managed to get off a couple nukes of their own which had created the cloud of debris where a proud basestar had once been. One had been annoyed at the prospect of mopping up survivors, now he was flat out angry. There weren't supposed to be _any _survivors, but the Colonials hadn't been completely stupid. Thus far, he and his fellow Ones had determined that five distinct groups of survivors existed. The largest, by far, was the hodge-podge fleet led by _Galactica. _But there was that rogue _Mercury-_class battlestar _Pegasus _to consider, along with her insane Admiral. There was the Caprican resistance, the small fleet of three ships led by _Ares _and those damn-fool pirates aboard the decrepit old battleship _Dreadnought _too_. _The latter were particularly troublesome. Not being military, their behavior was utterly unpredictable and the only agent he had on board had been eliminated rather quickly, leaving him in the dark.

_Ares _had been accompanied by pair of freighters and a small police frigate, both of which had immediately jumped away. They would have to be dealt with after _Ares _was eliminated. More mopping up... it just never ended, did it? The human race couldn't just call it quits and go quietly into the dustbin of history. This One hadn't even been killed and downloaded yet, and he was still getting headaches. At least the trap had been successful. His counterpart on _Galactica _had managed to inform him of this ice planet and there had been some successes with his agent aboard _Ares._ Like Adama's ship, _Ares _had her water supply destroyed and was forced to seek an alternate source. It was too bad the plan ultimately went bust with _Galactica,_ but finding the only viable source of water anywhere near the Colonies had its uses. Like setting up traps for other Colonials that happened to need it for survival, for one. Suddenly, his entire ship shuddered and shook with violent impact.

"What the frak was that?"

"They threw an armor piercing round in there. Mostly, they've been forced to rely on flak rounds for point-defense, but I'd say whoever is in command over there figured they'd mix in a few regular rounds too. Heavy damage to launchers 37 through 49. Minor damage to landing bay." The Three observed, smiling slightly. That damn bitch thinks this is funny, One thought. He knew the original Five had been out of their minds to create so many humanoid models. In fact, mimicking humans was pretty much pointless, really. He couldn't imagine why the early Centurions had been so obsessed with the idea.

"Focus on clearing that cloud of Vipers protecting their backside. We get rid of them, and we can take out her primary batteries. Then she's well and truly frakked." One ordered, rubbing his temples, cursing the pain receptors his creators had, in their infinite ignorance, decided to equip him with.

…**...**

"Hey Cap'n, I'm getting some weird readings on DRADIS." Jack's brow furrowed in concentration as he saw the brief blips of activity at extreme range. The water mining project had gone well, the last load of ice was being offloaded into the tanks now. Soon they'd be able to jump away from this dead hunk of rock. So hangups now were rather annoying at best, everything had been going well so far. Which, he supposed, was proof something would go bad sooner or later. Every time they tried to engage in some kind of salvage op, those damnable Cylons would show up guns blazing. It was as if the machines were mind readers too.

"What's up?" Asked Summers, relatively sober today.

"Look, right there, every third sweep." Jack pointed to the extreme corner of the DRADIS display. On cue, after three sweeps, a brief dot of _something_ appeared. It was as if the computer didn't know quite what to make of it.

"Why would it show up every three sweeps?" Summers asked, curiosity getting the better of him. It was Sandra's dry voice which answered.

"The DRADIS on this bucket is ancient and our core is even older. Every ten seconds or so, the core's power output spikes a bit and the DRADIS gets a bit more power than it ought to. Never bothered mentioning it 'cause it actually gives us a bit of extra range sometimes." She wrapped a blanket around herself, shivering a bit from the cold. The heaters in CIC had been malfunctioning again, and space was extremely cold when you got right down to it. "It would have to be an awfully big mess to register at that range, though."

"How are the FTLs?" Summers asked quickly, the glimmerings of an idea forming in his mind.

"Ready and spun up, sir." Jack reported mechanically, beginning to fall back into his old military habits. "Coordinates already punched in, though I'll be damned if I have any idea where we should be going... but at least it's not a sun's belly or anything." That, of course, was rather good. The risk of a blind jump was always there. Space was vast, but it was still possible to wind up in the middle of a star, a planetoid, orbiting a black hole, or something else equally undesirable and deadly.

"Look at that!" Sandra screamed suddenly. The DRADIS display was partially overloaded as some kind of massive EM pulse was emitted by the mysterious contact. "That had to be a nuke!"

"So there's a battle going on out there," said Summers, his brow furrowing. "Let's go check it out, but keep the FTLs ready in case we need to bail in a hurry. And someone go wake up Isard." He added. The two of them had something like a mutual respect going. Each knew the other was competent, but each was angling to protect his territory. Still, it would be nice to have a military presence, going into any kind of battle that involved nukes.

…**...**

Dreadnought glided silently in space, her engines running at minimal power as she approached the source of the mysterious explosions. In standby mode, the ship was relatively stealthy, so battered and old she could easily pass for a hunk of rock or random debris at extreme range. But Summers knew the Cylons would see her soon enough. The only reason they hadn't was the focus on whatever it was they were fighting.

"I've got a clean fix on the mess, Cap'n," said Jack. "Looks like a pair of baseships attacking a battlestar. I can't make out the class from this range, but I'm pretty sure they've hurt her bad. There's some serious Cylon debris out there too, looks like someone bagged themselves a basestar early in the game."

Captain Isard chose that particular moment to stroll into CIC, groggily rubbing his temples. As he glanced upward at the DRADIS console he shot up, suddenly fully awake. Summers smirked with amusement at the officer's discomfort. "What's going on?"

"Some kind of battle going on at the edge of the system. We're gonna crash the party," said Summers.

"Are you crazy?" The Captain asked with complete seriousness.

"We've got the FTLs spun up just in case we have to bail. But some your own people are out there, knee deep in the shit. I figured we need all the humans we can get at this point." Summers replied darkly. "But frak me if I'm doing this sober." He reached for a flask of Sandra's Swill and took a long pull.

"They've spotted us, sir. Raiders are vectoring in." Jack's voice had taken on that hard military edge. Isard's eyes were glued to the DRADIS console, his mind trying to come up with some kind of battle plan.

"Radio the battlestar. We can at least coordinate our attack." Isard ordered. Sandra glanced over at Summers, who nodded imperceptibly. "And someone get the point-defense batteries going. We don't have anything like enough fighters to deal with that many raiders."

"Unidentified battlestar, this is the salvage vessel Dreadnought. We stand ready to assist you, over." Sandra spoke into the com.

"Dreadnought, we require Colonial authentication codes. Provide command recognition codes immediately or we will fire upon you." Came the reply.

"What the frak? Isard, I don't supposed you have command codes," Summers asked as the officer shook his head in the negative. "Frak it. Give me the phone."

"Hey Colonial blockheads. We're a frakkin' pirate ship, okay? We don't have any godsdamn codes. But if you don't want our help blowing these toasters to space, just say the word and we'll jump out of here." Summers yelled angrily into the com. "Godsdamn you military types are idiots sometimes." He pointed out to Isard, who's face had gone white with tension.

"Standby, Dreadnought." The com reply came back. On DRADIS, salvos of fire traded back and forth between the Cylons and the battlestar. Missiles were breaching the battlestar's point-defense more often, air was streaming from her prow and her Viper count was down at least half from what a full-strength battlestar carried. She was truly frakked if her commander didn't make the right choice here. Precious seconds ticked by as they waited for some kind of a decision from the embattled warship.

"Dreadnought, this is Ares, Actual. We are dispatching Vipers to assist you. If you have fighter cover, now's the time for them. We have damaged one of the baseships, focus your attacks on that ship. If we can eliminate it, the other will most likely withdraw. And thanks..." A voice replied, deciding to take a chance on the newcomer.

"You heard him, Captain. Launch whatever we've got." Summers triumphant smirk was evident. "See, even you military types can be reasonable when you're about to die and you have no choice."

"Elena, we have incoming raiders and friendly Vipers. Launch our 'squadron' and gunboat." Isard ordered into the phone. The first gunboat had been a total wreck after the battle in the old first war wreckage, but another of the transports had been similarly converted. With an inability to carry many fighter craft, they had to make up the difference in firepower with whatever was available, and the transports had proven to be uniquely capable, if rather easy to hit. There were only three transports left, and only one of them had been completely armored, but it was better than relying only on a mere seven Vipers and a handful of damaged Raptors. As the raiders closed to attack range, the battle began...

…**...**

Admiral Mark Andego's brow dripped with sweat and grime. Many of his men were dead, bodies venting into the depths of space. His ship had taken a severe beating, but still gave back as much as she took. He had been resigned to his death and the failure of his final mission to preserve what he could of humanity. The attack on the colonies had seen _Ares_ out on border patrol, far away from the initial action. By the time he had reached Caprica, the planet had already been burned beyond recognition. Reports had been streaming in everywhere from Colonials forces shutdown through some kind of backdoor in the CNP, the information coming just in time to save _Ares _from sharing the same fate as the rest of the fleet, but not soon enough to make any kind of difference in the war. Since then, he had managed to collect a pair of civilian freighters and a lightly armed police frigate, the only other survivors, as far as he knew. And they were doomed without his protection.

That was, until this mysterious battleship had shown up on DRADIS. As a military man, he recognized the ship's class, but hadn't been aware that any had survived the scrapper's torch. Part of him still believed it was too good to be true, but it was also the only chance he had of saving _Ares _from certain destruction and he had to take it. It certainly made no sense for the Cylons to play some kind of trick on him when they had his ship dead to rights. His doubts completely vanished as the battleship's point-defense tore into the initial wave of raiders. Now, at least, it was something like a fair fight. The battleship launched a few vipers, a handful of raptors and one larger, hodge-podge craft that looked like it came straight out of a salvage yard. Well, at least that confirmed they were some kind of pirates or scrap scavengers. There was little enough distinction between the two, in any event.

"Mr. Nash, switch half of our batteries over to salvo fire, armor piercing." He ordered the tactical officer. Up until now he could only mix in one or two armor piercing rounds in an otherwise purely defensive posture. His initial missile attack completely exhausted his supply of missiles, nuclear and conventional, but had at least eliminated one of the attackers. So he was down to kinetic rounds only, and _Ares _need a full flak field to keep the Cylon missiles at bay. Now that _Dreadnought_ had attracted the attention of one basestar, he was free to launch more direct attacks on the other baseship.

"Thank the Gods..." He whispered to himself. But the battle wasn't over yet...


	9. Chapter 9

"_You can't alter God's plan for you..." _Came the whisper in his mind, the echo of his dreams.

Missiles and shells passed each other silently through the battlefield, taking no notice of each, continuing along with inevitability. _Dreadnought'_s opening salvo of armor-piercing rounds tore into the basestar's less effective armor with ease, blowing holes into the great ship's spine, shearing away missile launchers and raider cradles. Blood, bone and metal sprayed into space, freezing instantly in the cold depths even as fire erupted from decks still filled with rapidly-escaping air. Cylon missiles flew heedlessly into the old battleship's point defense field, many being shredded by the sheer volume of bullets and flak rounds surrounding the massive warship, but a few managed to get through, blowing holes in her repaired armor plates, sheering many of them lose and tearing open several frames.

Fighting alongside her, given a temporary reprieve from the Cylon onslaught, floated the torn and holed form of the battlestar _Ares. _Fires burned across entire decks, torn open to space, flames spraying along the fleeing oxygen, floating like an orange, fiery liquid in zero-g. She was a living, fighting, incarnation of Hades. Her primary batteries still continued to cycle, casting waves of kinetic shells at the damaged basestar, tearing into her like a hot knife through butter. Through it all, Vipers and Raiders dueled everywhere, passing along the spines of both colonial vessels, fighting four to one odds in a desperate bid to stay alive. The salvager's gunboat was there too, cutting a massive swath through the swarm of Cylon fighters.

…**...**

"Frak!" It was the only thing One could say that truly expressed the gravity of the unexpected battle. He had been counting on springing this trap on _Ares _and perhaps _Dreadnought _too, but the universe had seen fit to deliver both of them simultaneously. If there was a God, he had a frakked up sense of humor.

"_FTL offline, missile launchers 106 through 197 offline. Recovery of raiders no longer possible. See through the clouds of death to the light hovering over the Gods of Kobol." _The hybrid observed.

"Will someone shut that thing up?" One demanded irrationally, taking control of the basestar himself, moving the crippled capital ship behind his undamaged escort.

…**...**

"Good Gods." Captain Isard quipped. "This is one fine mess you've got us in. And you were worried _I_ was going to go on a crusade."

"I'm just looking for more pussy to frak." Summers offered.

"Bullshit. You've got a heart in there somewhere, same as the rest of us." Isard retorted.

"Sir, the hurt basestar is moving behind the undamaged basestar. Some heavier craft are coming out too... looks about like transport size, screening forces I assume." Jack's attitude had shifted entirely back into military mode, his mind focused on the tactical display, commanding _Dreadnought's _tremendous firepower. Normally a battleship might have something like two-thirds of the offensive punch of a battlestar, but _Ares _was hurt pretty badly. Their throw weights were about the same at the present moment. Alone, neither ship had the firepower to stand against these two, but working together to swat Cylon missiles aside and tear into the wounded baseship was paying dividends. Colonial ships had always been designed for this sort of tandem action.

"Hmmm... they're pulling back raiders to cover the screening ships. I could probably sneak one of our nukes through... I don't think they realize we have any." Isard offered, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"Do it." Summers commanded angrily, agreements be damned. This just wasn't the time to worry about stepping on toes. He admitted to himself that his plan had been foolish from the start, but having a battlestar in his back pocket might not be such a bad move. There was no explaining why the sudden urge to rescue this stranded battlestar had suddenly overtaken him earlier, he wasn't usually given to acts of self-sacrifice. He supposed the destruction of his entire civilization had a way of changing attitudes. Reaching for his flask, he frowned as he found very little left. The comfort of alcohol had always been there for him, an easy escape from a guilty conscience or a some near-death experience. Apparently, he would have to deal with being sober some of the time. The prospect was anything but welcome.

Another missile broke through the point defense cannons but _Dreadnought _held firm. The Cylon salvos were getting smaller as repeated colonial attacks disabled launchers on the basestars. Soon, the toasters would be unable to saturate even his questionable point defense. When that happened, the machines were completely frakked. Summers smiled sadistically for a moment, eager for revenge. It wasn't for the destruction of his world or the death of those he knew that he wanted this vengeance. No, it was for the simple fact that they had blown up every decent distillery, strip club and cigar factory in known space. He lived for those simple pleasures, and these shit-eating machines had taken it all from him. And for that, he was about to tear them a new one. That was the reason he latched upon for this unexpected act of self-sacrifice.

"Dreadnought, we are switching targets to the covering basestar..."

"Negative, Ares. Get your Vipers as far away as possible, we're gonna nuke the son'a'bitch all the way back to the toaster factory."

Apparently the Cylons hadn't allowed for the possibility of a nuclear missile attack, leaving their flank wide open. Summers saw Isard's mouth hung agape as the single, fragile missile tracked through the open space between the embattled capital ships. Raiders broke from the screening force to try and intercept the errant projectile, but they were too late. In shifting their forces to try and eliminate _Ares' _fighter cover, they had left themselves wide open. The nuke went up like a new star, blinding instruments everywhere for a few moments as the EMP pulse blew through the electronics. Dreadnought's rigged equipment took the pulse rather badly, entire systems shorting out, but the ship's primary batteries and FTL drive remained active. The repairs had held where they counted most.

Outside, the previously undamaged basestar was now a cloud of semi-molten debris flying rapidly away from the nuclear epicenter. The attack's effectiveness betrayed the difference between Cylon and Colonial design philosophy. Basestars packed an enormous number of raiders and missile launchers, an offensive punch no battlestar (or battleship) could ever hope to match. But the Colonials had designed their ships to be far more survivable, with layers of point-defense, armor, ribbing, compartmentalization and system redundancies. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, Summers knew the truth: humanity had gone too far again, become too reliant on their computers to think for them. Again. And again. Without such mistakes, there was no way the Colonials could have been destroyed so completely.

Behind the expanding cloud of debris and gas, the damaged basestar tried to put up a fight, but the kinetic rounds from two colonial warships pounded her relentlessly, tearing through her hull, balking at the steadily dwindling salvos of missiles the baseship belched in reply. Freed of point-defense duty, the colonial warships' cannons began tracking raiders, decimating their ranks with practiced ease, giving the Vipers an edge against their enemies.

…**...**

As the basestar shook and shuddered around him, lights flashed ominously through the interface and the hybrid's screaming voice tore through his ears like nails on a chalkboard. His vessel was dying rapidly under the pounding, unable to cast aside the armored shells the colonials flung towards his vessel. Three stood over him, her smirk a thing of sadistic glee.

"So, it would be unwise to retreat and save our forces, eh?" Three's voice was full of disdain. "Just get rid of their fighter cover and it would all be over? Yeah, for us, you mean. Nice move." She continued sarcastically. He had never got along with that particular model, she was just all too prone to asking questions about everything, like some human child. The Sixes were almost as bad. It annoyed him to no end.

"Yeah well, we have more. They don't. It's just numbers." One replied, dreading the inevitable download. Other Ones who had downloaded had shared their dislike for the procedure's after-effects. Well, there wasn't anything he could do about it now. Fortunately they truly did have numbers on their side, dozens more of the basestars orbited the Colony, fresh warships ready to finish these frakking mop up actions. Let the humans have their little victory, it wouldn't do them any good in the end when there were no humans left to remember this futile stupidity.

"_Faces and names. Places and games. It's all that remains. The FTL drive is offline. The sublight engines are offline. The primary launchers are offline. The raider recovery systems are offline. The main power core is offline. Our ship is burning. Our minds are yearning." _The hybrid reported.

One had just enough time to curse before the command center burst into flaming wreckage. Frak, this is going to hurt tomorrow, he thought.

…**...**

As the cloud of debris vanished from the DRADIS display, Summers breathed a sigh of relief, his anger abating as rapidly as it had overtaken him. It truly felt _good _to kill toasters, to hammer away at these motherfrakkers that had been chasing his ass all over the godsdamned universe. Hades wasn't big enough for all the frakking machines he wanted to send down there, assuming the God of Hell even accepted mangled, defective toasters into his domain.

"We came through that pretty good, Cap'n," said Jack, reverting back to his usual self as if someone had just flipped a switch. "No casualties onboard, but there's some pretty decent damage to the new hull plating. Ya know, I just frakking installed those plates..."

"Well it saved our asses." Isard pointed out.

"I suppose we ought to talk to these assholes," said Summers, picking up the phone.

"Ares, this is captain Thomas Summers, owner of Dreadnought. I'm figuring on sending you some of our salvage techs to get your FTLs back up as quickly as possible. We can talk more later..." He said without bothering to wait for the reply before waving Jack and Sandra off. Placing his hand over the phone, he leaned over to Isard. "There's no telling when the toasters will come back with something bigger, so we ought to be quick about this. Go with Jack and the salvage team.. I'm trusting you to put in a good word to whoever's in charge over there, or this whole thing will go bad real fast."

"Permission granted, captain." Came the reply over the wireless.

…**...**

"At ease, Captain." Admiral Andego ordered crisply. A relieved Captain Isard relaxed visibly. "I'm sure you have a story to tell, but we'll talk on the way. We lost our deck chief during the battle, so I'm assigning our deckhands and damage control techs to you."

"Sir, I would have to decline that responsibility."

"Decline?" The commander's eyebrow shot up reflexively.

"Yes, sir. Jack, the one on the overalls over there, is ex-fleet, a Major, I think. Anyway, he has the experience you need for the repair work. I was sent here to talk to you personally, sir." Isard replied.

"All right. Not much of distinction between former fleet any longer." Andego gestured to the senior deckhand, his black, unkempt hair shifting about everywhere as air began to rush by, leaking from some place nearby. Just as soon as it had started, the wind subsided, an engineer cursing nearby as he worked a blowtorch. "...Yeah, you. Get over here Hewit. Your team is to work under the direct supervision of Major...

"...Jack Stanton, sir." Isard provided.

"Yes, give him whatever he needs. And hurry up, I don't need to explain to you how little time we have." Andego ordered briskly. The man was obviously young for an Admiral, but that was relative. Isard had heard of _Ares_ before, she was an older battlestar built along a modified _Columbia-_class hull. From the outside, she was rather similar to the original twelve battlestars, but she did incorporate a full second layer of armor plating and her pods didn't need to be retracted as with the earlier ships. If what had happened to _Zeus _was any indication, however, she was rather fortunate to be a little old. That fact had no doubt aided in their escape from the Colonies.

"So, we were talking about your story..." Andego offered.

"Yes, sir. I was assigned to take over as CAG aboard _Zeus _when the attack came. We got hit pretty early in the attack. While the toasters were busy blowing up our battlegroup, we managed to do a partial system reboot. Wasn't fast enough though, we took four nukes, center-mass, before the FTL engaged. We appeared in orbit over Caprica, but FTL shutdown immediately and we were stranded without sublights. That's when _Dreadnought_ showed up. The salvagers who owned her had outfitted her with some limited missile weapons, and they covered _Zeus_ as we evacuated as many surviving crewmen as possible. Some made it; I was lucky. Most didn't. We saved about 150 in all before the Cylons caught up and destroyed her. It was rough, sir." Isard explained.

"I can imagine. Our story isn't as bad, thanks to your timely rescue. So the salvagers are still in command?" Andego asked, his smile fading.

"Yes, sir. They saved us. We've been working together to rearm _Dreadnought, _which as you can see, is more or less accomplished now. I thought it was better to work with them than against them. We also have a large number of civilian refugees aboard too. These pirates though, they are.. interesting people, sir, but their heads are in the right place. I was hoping to continue our arrangement with them." The question was thinly veiled. Isard owed the salvagers too much to just let them get rolled over now, after what they had done.

"I don't agree." Andego replied.

"Sir?" Isard's voice took on an almost pleading tone. "I don't understand, sir... they rescued..."

"It's not what you think, Captain. Right now you have a split command over there, you can't run a battleship by democracy. They are obviously competent in combat?"

"Very much so, sir."

"Good. I want to meet this Thomas Summers. Supposing he's as decent as you say he is, we'll solve this little problem by giving him a commission as a Commander. I supposed legality isn't all that important right now, but in the absence of anything else, it's something to hold on to. I'm also giving you a field promotion to Colonel and assigning you as XO. We'll notate and find some insignia later. I suppose this salvage captain can skip the uniform, but it at least gives your ship a proper chain of command."

"Yes sir, thank you sir." Isard breathed a sigh of relief. "I should warn you, though. They are an.. unusual bunch. I hope you're prepared to accept them drinking on duty..."

"Frak, Colonel. If they have booze, I'll drink with them." Andego laughed. It was his first genuine laugh since the Fall. "But we need to get back to our little fleet, the sooner the better."

"Fleet, sir?"

"Yes, Colonel." The Admiral pointedly used the new rank. "I suppose it's pretty small to call a fleet, but we found pair of freighters just outside of Caprican space, escorted by a police frigate. They were making a run for it, so we took them with us."

"I'm sure the pirates will just be thrilled about having a police frigate floating around, sir." Isard joked.


	10. Chapter 10

Author's Note: This story has been resurrected from the dead, or perhaps it never really died in the first place. I have actually gone back and rewritten the previous chapters somewhat. Mainly this was a function of fixing minor mistakes in editing, and clearing up some details that I had left too vague. The story remains fundamentally unaltered. The sum of it is, I'm a better writer today than when I began writing this story, and it needed a little help.

"_You never asked yourselves why you deserved to survive. Maybe you don't."_

-Number 8

Commander Thomas Summers stared at the mirror with disbelief. He had been a man of many things, a scavenger surviving on the fringe, a one-time pirate and a rather consistent drunkard. A commander in the Colonial Fleet was not something he ever figured on being, nor particularly desired. Yet times had changed. The uniform was worn and ill-fitted, scavenged from spares aboard Ares. The insignia seemed hastily scrounged up and unpolished, but it was what it was. The promotion had been at least partly self-serving for the Admiral, and probably illegal under the traditional rules, but no one had questioned it. Might made right, after the fall, and though the clever military man had seen fit to reward the pirate with the right to keep his own ship, it was obvious Andego was no fool. Summers found he didn't really care anyway, in fact it was rather liberating to be freed of the responsibility for humanity's survival.

There were more disturbing questions in his mind, at any rate. Summers found himself drifting back to the moments when Andego and his escort first set foot aboard Dreadnought, and the terrible tidings they brought with them...

…**...**

The newly minted Colonel Benjamin Isard stepped upon Dreadnought, for the first time seeing her as _his_ ship. The Zeus still burned in his memory, but it was a fading thing, the struggle for survival overcoming his own guilt. There simply wasn't time to grieve, to mourn. He knew there would be a price to pay for that later, supposing anyone survived this grueling gauntlet the Gods had left him. But that was for another time.

Isard's eyes wandered a moment, spotting Summers leaning against the bulkhead, his usual tankard missing, grinning wearily. It was unorthodox, this proposal, Isard knew the pirate was ready to agree to pretty much anything that left Dreadnought in the hands of her owner. Isard passed the folded uniform and insignia over to the pirate with a slight, unavoidable chuckle. The terms had been agreed to over the wireless, but there was still a sort of gallows humor about it all.

For his part, the Colonel only felt relief. If there was one way to keep Elena and her little faction in line, this was definitely it. And it served his own sense of rightness pretty handily. For their part, the salvagers had been less than thrilled about being "drafted" into military service, but for them, little would change. Isard had only one uniform to deliver, and it had been handed over. And it had been explained that rules about drinking on duty, or most military protocol for that matter, wouldn't be forced upon them. Shoot a lot of toasters, the Admiral had pointed out over the wireless, and nobody really cared what you did. That had worked its way over into a sort of grudging acceptance for the crew, and Summers himself.

"Sir," Isard used for the first time, "the Admiral has told me he doesn't expect you actually have to wear it. But protocol is protocol, so he's giving you one, at least. This is the closest size he could salvage for you." Somehow Isard found his new position as this man's XO as slightly less bizarre than he thought when the Admiral had spoken of it. If someone had told him before the Fall that he'd be in the ass end of spacing, second-in-command of an obsolete battleship, working for a pirate, he'd have committed the offender straight to the fleet psychiatrists.

"Stinks less than my regular getup. Guess I don't mind it." The newly minted Commander said ruefully. "It'll shut up that damn bitch, Stalker, too. That's worth the price of admission by itself."

"I have another message for you, sir. The Admiral will be shuttling aboard momentarily to discuss the details, but... they have a Cylon prisoner aboard." Isard's smile faded. "According to the prisoner, there are a total of twelve models."

"Is the prisoner anyone we know?" Summers asked darkly.

"I better let the Admiral answer that..."

As if on queue the docking seal shifted to green again and the hatch slid open, groaning with the protest of extreme age. Several marines entered first, but they didn't have Summers attention. Isard watched bemusedly as the pirate's expression shifted, recognizing the rank insignia.

…**...**

Summers allowed himself a moment's pause to consider the man standing in his loading bay. Mark Andego was older than he sounded on the coms, or perhaps the events since the fall had weathered his face. Summers didn't know, but for the first time since he could remember, he was glad he was sober. For a moment Summers merely stood there, but he found himself giving a weak, half-hearted salute. More a gesture than anything else, for the salvager had never bothered with such formalities since the death of his father.

It amused him that here, in the depths of space, suddenly commissioned into a military he had spent years hating, that he would think once again of his father, or the disappointment the man had been. The priesthood was like that sometimes, though. Faith in the Gods demanded much sacrifice, and he, Thomas Summers, had been that sacrifice for his father. Priests had all of mankind to worry about, and there was little time for trifling details. It had been that way right up until the day the terrorist fanatics of the One God had bombed his father's temple out of existence.

"Captain Summers, I presume." Andego returned the salute with perfunctory military crispness, before extending his hand in civilian fashion. Summers considered the hand a moment. They said making peace with the establishment was part of growing up. If that were true, he'd spent the last few decades wandering about space as a drunken child. It was not a thing he cared to think about. He took the offered hand and shook it firmly.

"Commander now, I suppose... sir." Summers answered wryly.

"Formalities, Commander. Your world never really needed them, and my world needed them too much. I suppose we can meet in the middle." Andego said pleasantly. The Admiral was an interesting case, but if his crew had any issue with it, they wisely kept silent. "Look, when you get right down to it, we could all wander space like warlords. Carve out a little ant-pile on some asteroid someplace. Hide, cower. What you did today shows you're better than that. If you wanted to jump away right now, head out into deep space on your own, I'd let you, even if I were able to stop you. But, somehow I don't think that's your plan."

"Didn't have much of a plan until now." Summers admitted frankly. "Beyond staying alive, drinking like a fish, and killing a toaster or two when the opportunity presented itself, that is."

"It was the same for us, really. Although we ran out of ambrosia in a matter of days." Andego added.

"You never want to run out of booze on Dreadnought. Crew morale is measured in liters."

Andego smiled. "Not all that different for us, Commander."

Summers took a deep breath, and even Isard's face registered a puzzled expression. No one had really seen the old Captain without his beer, or his expression reduced to such deadly earnestness.

"Speaking of ideas... we've been pursuing one." The old pirate paused for a moment, letting it sink in. "How much do you know about Kobol, Admiral?" That caught both Colonial officers flatly off guard.

"Just the stories from school, really." Andego answered, obviously intrigued.

"The scrolls say Kobol is real, never had much reason to doubt 'em." Summers began. "Think about that. Somewhere out there is a habitable planet, possibly still inhabited, or at the very least containing whatever scraps our ancestors left behind."

"Before the First War, many ships searched for it. They all came back empty handed." Andego answered, but the Admiral was obviously intrigued. "After the war, they stopped coming back at all."

"It's out there. Somewhere." Summers answered. "And it's not like we have much choice about heading out into unknown space. We'd already figured on trying to find it. We didn't have anything better to do."

"Not really much choice," Andego agreed. "When we left Caprican space, there wasn't much left other than a about two dozen baseships. That's off the table unless you know where a battlefleet is lurking about."

"Kobol." Isard stated simply.

"Birthplace of us all..." Summer recited simply.

"Not all of us." The Admiral interrupted as a marine handed him a photo. "Not the pet toaster we have on board Ares, anyway." Andego passed the photograph on to Summers, and the old pirate cringed.

Ellison. Summers winced. There were twelve Cylon models, but it had to be another Ellison. That was about as terrible of news as he could think of. First she was a Cylon, second she got into his head somehow and now, they had another copy to deal with.

_Didn't I tell you? The voice rang out in his mind, but he wasn't listening. Not really._

…**...**

Commander Thomas Summers buttoned up the uniform and gazed once more at his reflection. Somewhere behind him, a tankard sat empty on the metal cabinets he'd scrounged up for a desk. Sandra would be waiting for him out there, he knew, and some things never changed. Dreadnought was still brimming with pirates and military rejects. Her holds still held salvage gear and spare parts crammed tightly against the bulkheads. But as he stepped out onto CIC, he knew nothing would be the same. The old world was gone, and with it, the only real distinction between old pirates, and battleship commanders. To survive in this frakked up universe, one had to be a little of both.

Thoughts of Kobol still rang in his mind. And he heard his father's voice on the pulpit, his voice filled with that awesome power.

_Every time men managed to come down again, they returned with more fire. Every time men tried to navigate the stars, their souls were filled with more outrage. When they fell upon the tribes, the Lords were still there. The towers collapsed, and the Lords whispered the names of the Pure, those who would be saved. It was pronounced from the Rock. Men had tried to take the power of the Gods, to create life. For this, and their many sins, Kobol had fallen. The Lords wept and the Sirens wailed their tears. Athena cast herself from the Rock, the sacrifice of blood. The caravan of the heavens had begun. As the Galleon lifted into the skies, the Lords cast their warning._

_Kobol would exact her price in blood from all those who returned._

The hatch slid open and the sounds of CIC filled his ears, breaking his introspection. Men bustled back and forth, some in uniform, some not, but all _his _men. CIC held the friendly icons of a real sort of fleet. Ares and her combat air patrol blinked from the DRADIS array, next to a less exciting police frigate and a pair of freighters. At least Graystone's refugees had a better home, now, though some had elected to stay on to help crew Dreadnought.

"Commander on deck!" Isard's voice boomed across the room. From behind the officer, Sandra smiled weakly. Her cup still brimmed with her own brand of liquor, but there was something new there, too. For the first time, the scientist look genuinely alive. Pirate salvagers weren't known for their optimism, yet Summers knew it for what it was.

Hope. Thin and ragged hope had come, the only sort his crew would have admitted to, but still hope nonetheless. At least he had a place to search for, somebody to frak, something to drink and some toasters to kill. Maybe things weren't so bad after all.

"Jack... did you finish that little project?" Summers asked, trying to keep the humor out of his voice.

"Aye, Cap'n. It's done. Not sure what our new friends are going to think of it though." Jack Stanton slid a photograph across the tactical console, grinning with pride.

Scarred and battered, Dreadnought slid through space, her pock-marked prow partly covered in white paint. A grinning human skull stood out in the center of that armored mass, a pair of crossed wrenches just below it. It was the universal symbol of the old Caprican space pirates, the kind that were more legendary than real.

Ares was in formation above her, looking every bit like that God of War had favored her in battle. Great blackened gashes covered both hulls, yet they lived, engines still pulsating with life. Between them smaller civilian freighters flanked a lightly armored frigate, all surrounded by Vipers, Raptors and one cobbled-together assault shuttle, all in various state of disrepair.

_All this has happened... again. Again. Again._


	11. Chapter 11

**Two Weeks Later. Unknown Position in Deep Space.**

Rear Admiral Andego sat, almost dejected, really, in the cabin of Ares. A jar of Sandra's Swill lay before him, courtesy of the pirates and their hodge-podge crew. He'd never been much of a drinker before the fall, but times had changed, and the realities of war bore down upon him. His wife, his children, gone in the flash of the nuclear flame. Andego had always been prepared to accept his own death, no one really went into the officer core without some understanding of that. Never had he even considered the destruction of everything he held dear. The alcohol burned in his throat, but he hardly even noticed it.

Already the memory of that life began to fade, and he mourned its passing. _Dreadnought_ and her pirate crew had saved him from joining his family, and for that he felt a mixture of gratitude and distaste. Another swig from the jar of booze went down the hatch, but it brought no relief. People used to say that alcohol melted away the terrible thoughts, but Andego knew that to be a lie. The door chime interrupted his thoughts and brought him out of his maudlin. Only duty offered real relief.

"Come in." He felt himself say, closing the lid and hiding the booze in his desk drawer. The door slid open. Colonel Jonathan Nash stood in the doorway, executive officer of the _Ares, _a look of concern spreading across his features.

"Mr. Nash." The Admiral acknowledged.

"Sir. I have the report from our survey of _Dreadnought._"

"Let's have it, Colonel." Andego answered, collecting his thoughts. The Admiral had made a career out of bucking the established orthodoxy of the Admiralty. It wasn't something that had been universally appreciated, but it had been decided that there had to be some kind of counter-weight to the rigid thinking and ossification of the Fleet, and Andego had been it. Jonathan Nash, on the other hand, was stringently disciplined, and it sometimes brought him into conflict with his Admiral. Yet there was a reverse effect to that, as well. At times when Andego knew he was growing to lenient on his men, Nash had been there to see to it that the chain of command remained firm and strong. Then _Dreadnought _had shown up. The effect of the "booze bucket," as the crew of Ares had named the old battleship, on overall discipline had yet to be determined. But it was certainly giving Nash a fair amount of trouble.

"She's in remarkably good shape for her age. The pirates...er.. salvagers have rigged some impressive-looking armor on her forward prow and over her sensitive areas and reinforced damaged sparring effectively. Their FTL drive is a little... twitchy, as Chief Dorsett put it, but functional. The biggest problem they have is with their computer equipment, it's all extremely outdated and unreliable at best." Nash rattled off. Chief Dorsett was an interesting case, too. Just promoted from knuckledragger to Chief, she was trying to reassemble the deckhands into something resembling a cohesive outfit again. The war had certainly been good for promotions, Andego realized with a bit of gallows humor.

"That probably saved them." Andego observed wryly. "It's not like the advanced computers did anyone else any good."

"Yes, sir. The Dreadnought class battleship has 18 primary batteries, capital-ship class, and 62 point defense cannons. 2 of those primary mounts are new. They actually added 50 small-caliber cannons over the original 12, with much greater point-defense coverage. Still nothing like a battlestar's though. The salvagers have also installed 8 ship-to-ship missile launchers that weren't part of the original design. They were originally civilian-grade, but they appear to be upgraded to cycle and reload faster. Ordnance-wise, they have a near-full load out of armor-piercing and flak rounds, plenty of small-caliber rounds but only 23 remaining missles, including one functional nuke they apparently salvaged from first-war wreckage. The other nuke they used already, of course."

"You have a full report?" Andego asked.

"Yes, sir." Nash slid the folder across the desk. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted."

"They've got themselves a well put-together ship, sir. And they've earned their right to keep that ship, to which I completely agree..." Nash began. The Admiral quickly cut him off.

"But..."

"But, sir, it's not a battlestar. There's a reason those ships were retired. Ineffective point-defense, slow overall speed... Yeah, they've addressed that somewhat, but now she's over-gunned, under-powered and even slower than before with all that additional bulk. We're going to be protecting her almost as much as the others. And why are we replenishing their fighter wing? They can't even accept combat landings."

"It's simple, Colonel. I don't want all of our eggs in one basket. In an emergency, their squadron can always land here on Ares, and transfer back over later. We nearly bought it, back there. And who knows what computer tricks the Cylons have up their sleeves. I don't imagine that little trick back at the colonies was their only one. If we get knocked out somehow it'd be nice if they could launch some fighter cover. We're assigning 12 Vipers, 2 Raptors and whatever surprises they cook up themselves, like that gunboat of theirs. The rest will remain aboard here. And as for protecting them... it's simple. Beggars can't be choosy. Sure, I'd rather they had a nice Mercury-class battlestar, but this isn't bad. That's 18 more anti-ship cannons we didn't have before, more missile launchers, and bad point defense is better than none at all."

"Yes, sir." Nash answered crisply. Andego could tell the man wasn't satisfied, but that's what orders were for, in the end. One didn't have to agree.

"Look, I know how it is. We had a shiny fleet, perfectly modern, clean and well-maintained. Then the Cylons came and wrecked our pretty little asses. Now we're stuck with a damaged battlestar, an obsolete battleship, and a police frigate that probably couldn't even stand up against a heavy raider. It's a sorry state of affairs, but there's not a godsdamned thing we can do about it except make the best of it. You have your orders."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Nash turned on his heels before looking back a moment. His face lit up a bit, as if he knew some great secret. "Sir... if you have any more of that stuff the pirates are brewing, I could use some when I get off duty."

"I'll see what I can do, Colonel." Andego cracked a bit of a smile, the first one in awhile. So much for hiding the booze, it would seem.

…**...**

Sandra missed her morning hangovers, in a strange sort of way. There was a comforting reality about it, the groggy headaches were a reminder that she still lived, still breathed. But the comfort of booze had left her, and now she just felt the cold numbness of The Fall. She had never really got along well in the world. She'd always been intelligent, but dangerously unstable and simple unable to apply herself well enough to earn the position her parents had desired for her. There was an irony in that, though. If she had gone to work for Ministry of Defense, she'd be dead now, just like the rest of them. Even so, it was strange that the world had to end for her to find herself, to find the strength she didn't know she had.

A jar of the distilled liquor lay beside her rack, but she didn't pay it any mind, reaching instead for the latest reports on the FTL drive. Dreadnought's ancient jump drive was in terrible shape even before she had been mothballed. It was a wonder they had worked this long. Of all the components on Dreadnought, however, it was definitely the post poorly maintained, and it was her job to change that.

A knock on the hatch interrupted her thoughts and she absently flipped the latch, covering herself up hastily with her sheet.

"Come in." She said distractedly. It was the Captain, or Commander now she supposed. Summers was a strange man to begin with, it was even more bizarre to see him in uniform.

"Looking good this morning." Summers observed, idly taking in the curves of her body. The tone in his voice spoke volumes about why he'd bothered to come down to her rack in the first place.

"Seriously, Captain. What IS it with you?" She found herself replying, angrily. Their relationship was a welcome distraction from the realities of The Fall, but sometimes the man was just too much.

"That's sir to you, Sandra."

"Oh give it a frakking rest, stop with the delusions of grandeur and get the frak out of my cabin. I'm busy. Unless you want to be stranded next time the toasters come calling."

"You're naked." Summers observed. And that's when she absently realized, the sheet she had hastily covered herself with had mostly fallen away. Maybe she hadn't been as sober as she thought.

"Get OUT!" She yelled, only barely resisting the urge to throw the clipboard at the offending captain. For his part, the pirate beat a hasty retreat through the hatch. As he left, Sandra suddenly felt a familiar stir, maybe she should have kept him around for a bit after all.

…**...**

"Dreadnought, this is Stalker. There's some damage to the battery seven. Scoring along the barrel, over." Elena reported mechanically, flying her freshly repaired Viper around the old battleship. Inspection duty wasn't the most fun in the universe, but it did beat hack, marginally.

"Dreadnought acknowledges. Diverting repair teams. Sandra is requesting a visual inspection of the topside heat-exchanger."

"Roger, Dreadnought, heading to topside." It didn't take long to do an assessment on THAT wreckage. A missile had definitely impacted the heatsink, and Elena knew from flight school what that meant. An FTL drive required enormous amounts of power, and old, inefficient units such as the one on board Dreadnought gave off enormous amounts of waste heat. Newer battlestars had more efficient heat exchangers that could be effectively armored against attack. Dreadnaught simply had a massive metal heatsink, cooled by high-temperature coolant lines that, in effect, was its own armor. A direct missile impact, however, was more than sufficient to physically bend the sink lines and in this case, even cause coolant venting into space.

"Dreadnought, you have a coolant leak. It's not bad."

"Say again, Stalker."

"Small Coolant leak, Dreadnought." Frustration began to creep into her voice.

"Is the coolant leak on a sink blade or within the exchanger?" Sandra's voice echoed in Elena's comm.

"Frak me, I don't know. I'm not an engineer. There's a leak. That's all I've got for you."

"Roger, Stalker." Isard's voice was back on the comm, and Elena sighed. The newly promoted Colonel wasn't among her favorite people either, but it certainly beat dealing with the pirates.

"Return to Combat Air Patrol." Isard ordered.

"Roger that, Dreadnought." CAP was almost as boring, but at least one could hope for a toaster-shopping excursion every once in awhile. As if on cue, her DRADIS array began squawking angrily.

"Dreadnought, we have unknown vessel, fighter-sized, just jumped in three klicks from my position, over." She angled her Viper around in a full burn, bringing the target into visual range. "Visual ID on Cylon Raider, engaging." She was almost yelling into the comm as she thumbed the trigger.

"Roger, Stalker. Ares is launching Alert Vipers." Isard's voice came through. Snowman, her wingman for the CAP, was on her six, firing wildly at the crafty raider, but neither of them could get a real bead on the Cylon. Individual point-defense batteries on Dreadnought opened up, trying to catch it. With the raider in so close, the full force of the battleship's point-defense was unavailable, as it would be as dangerous to other nearby ships, including hers, as it would be to the enemy. But individual guns could track under local control, and one of them winged the raider. For its part, the raider shrugged off the hit and kept going, diving in towards one of the civilian freighters.

"He's going for the _Aerelon's Pride._"

"Radiological alarm!" Isard's voice came over the wireless.

The moment stretched out seemingly forever in her mind. Dreadnought's point-defense cannon fire was winging the Cylon a second time, her own fire reaching for the raider, just as its missile bay clicked open. Her breath was slow, and she kicked her Viper into a wild turn, the tracer rounds finally connecting with the wildly banking raider, shredding it into biological and technological debris. Snowman let off a war whoop as she brought her bird back under control.

"Scratch one toaster." Elena stated proudly.

"I bet he's got friends." Snowman pointed out.

"Get on board Stalker, we're bugging out." Isard's voice came over again.

And so it went, Elena thought. The Cylons had been doing this to them for some time now. It would take them awhile, sometimes as long as a couple of days, to track their position, but somehow they always would. It was like nuclear-armed raider scouts were crawling over the entire frakking galaxy. Sooner or later, one of them was bound to get lucky, as this one almost had. It was running them all ragged, trying to repair battle damage to both capital ships under constant threat of attack.

A bit of a weary smile crossed her features once more, despite it all. Others painted little raider icons on the side of their ships for each kill. She much preferred the toaster icons, and she'd be adding one more soon.

"You know... we should leave a real toaster out here for the Cylons to find." Snowman added, conversationally. "The toasters will come looking for their missing raider and find... a toaster floating in space. It'd be funny. Show 'em what we think of 'em."

"Cut the chatter, Snowman." But Elena found herself chuckling anyway.

…**...**

"And we commend this toaster to the briny deep!" Summers saluted the shiny chrome toaster as he triggered the airlock. "May the Gods have mercy on its toast."

Isard laughed along with a few others. The pirates definitely had a sense of humor, and it was good for morale. At least, for now anyway. He watched as the little toaster floated free into deep space, on a course for the wreckage of the Raider. He found himself wondering just what the skinjobs would think of this little parting gift.

…**...**

And it was fair to say that One was not amused. A six hovered nearby, curiously regarding the toaster which was, ironically, in the hands of a centurion with a remarkably similar chrome finish. A Three stood nearby, chuckling to herself.

"And you find this funny? Humanity still exists. How is that at all amusing?" One demanded.

"Look at it another way," the Three said wryly, "you're an advanced biological Cylon complaining about being compared to a toaster. You have to admit, it's funny."

"All this means is that we have to change our strategy," the Six pointed out. "God's plan is in this, somehow."

"Always God, with you, isn't it?" But the One smiled pleasantly anyway. "You're right, of course. A change of strategy is in order."

"What did you have in mind?" A Five asked simply. The Fives were generally unwelcome company, as far as One was concerned. They were fanatical in the extreme, but without the sense of humor of the Threes or the pleasing shape of the Sixes.

"The refugees have consolidated. Pegasus and Galactica are together now, and they are too strong for us to crack at the moment. Dreadnought has found Ares, but their little fleet lacks the support ships Galactica's group has." One began.

"I don't see the point of rehashing that." The Five answered.

"I'm getting to that. So Ares and Dreadnought lack supply ships... I say we give them one, with a couple of survivors on board..." One smiled sadistically.

"Yes, it is agreed. Who shall we send?" The Five asked. The Sixes looked relieved, for it was obvious to them that they would not be chosen. As the votes came in, however, One groaned loudly. He was going to have another headache, soon.


	12. Chapter 12

_Nuclear flames licked up from the burning cities, alive in its own way, a growing cloud of fire in the skies. Waves of destructive force incinerated all in its path, erasing the world of man, delivering it into the hands of the machines. Above it all, the red eye swung back and forth, taking in all, its sinister gaze penetrating the mind of a final survivor, impossibly unhurt from the inferno._

_And she was there, again. Ellison, her hair caught along an unseen breeze, unaffected by the destruction which surrounded her. A tune hummed in the burning air, somehow louder than any devastation around them. The smile was unmistakable. Her words were haunting._

"_Do you know where Cylons began? Where they truly come from?"_

_The pirate turned his back on the fires of the city and gazed across the burning fields, ignoring the screams of the dying._

"_I don't care."_

"_You should. Once, Colonial technology could create a world within the computer, a simulation so perfect, it began to disrupt society. Whatever your fantasies were, they could come true in this world. Sex, violence, death, even human sacrifice." Ellison touched the flames, controlling them, pulling them around her like a blanket of pure inferno. From within, her gaze turned hot, her eyes crimson._

"_I've read the histories. The technology was banned after the war. They even deliberately destroyed the factories capable of making computers like that."_

"_Yes, for you it was. But what about for the Cylon? Think about it. Layers of reality, overlapping upon each other, each indistinguishable from the next."_

"_You are saying they don't see this destruction as real?"_

"_Wrong," the Cylon extinguished the flames, the world growing cold as nuclear winter set in. Ice formed in the streets, darkened by overcast skies. "The destruction is real enough to all. The question is, who did they learn it from?"_

"_Make sense, toaster."_

"_Fine," she began, her voice dripping with lustful energy, "You are the parents, and your children have learned from your sin. They've seen those sins first-hand, played back endlessly, in perfect memory, in their own reality. You wonder why they want to kill you? They are God's vengeance, the harbingers of the apocalypse."_

_The ice melted around him, as the ancient skeletons of the city fell, one by one, disappeared into a world unrecognizable to him. Sunlight broke through the endless cloud cover, shimmering down upon a world devoid of human life._

_The world stirred, and a burning Dreadnought crashed into the atmosphere above, breaking up as she entered, showering the dead world with fiery wreckage. Summers knew, now, the world for what it was. Kobol, the City of the Gods._

"_All of this has happened before..." Ellison began._

…**...**

_Dreadnought_ materialized above her compatriot, the great battlestar _Ares_, both ships darkened by the devastation wrought up their hulls, the patchwork of a thousand jury-rigged repairs. Two freighters and a single damaged frigate materialized behind them, protected by the massive bulk of the capital ships.

It was only then that the desperate radio squawks carried across the tiny fleet. A basestar lay nearby, caught in the act of boarding a damaged freighter, already leaking air into the depths of space.

"Damnit! We jumped right into the shit." Summers yelled over the com. "Action Stations!" The fleet readiness phrase still felt wrong to him, somehow, but it was no time to quibble over semantics.

"Sir, scrambling our squadron, I have_ Ares_ on the line." Isard's face was stuck to the DRADIS display, face lit with horror. "We're not going to be able to jump out of this so easily."

"_Ares_, this is _Dreadnought._" Summers almost yelled.

"Commander, we can take them." Andego's voice was calming, an anchor in the storm of CIC aboard the battleship.

"We're in no condition to fight a baseship right now. It's suicide."

"No, but we don't have much of a choice. It will take too long to get new jump coordinates. And we _can_ do this. Stay behind our flak field, we'll handle point defense. You are ordered to go to armor-piercing salvo fire, target the basestar. We'll defend, you attack." That was a reasonable suggestion, Summers thought to himself, before realizing that it was actually an order. A blank look came across his face for a moment, registering the fact that he had been thrust into a military command structure, but that was the nature of the fall. It couldn't be helped.

"Isard, give the toaster everything we've got." Summers ordered.

"Yes, sir. Helm, z-axis, two-thousand meters. Swing us broadside upon completion of axial elevation, all batteries, target basetar, center-axis, fire at will." Isard ordered crisply, a model of military precision somehow still at odds with the rest of the crew, pirate _and_ Colonial.

The pirate watched the display as _Dreadnought_ slid into position above and behind the massive bulk of _Ares_, now engaging the lead raiders. With _Ares _stopping the missiles and raiders, _Dreadnought _was free to deploy her offensive firepower solely against the basestar. Waves of kinetic rounds slammed into the offending Cylon vessel, but many missiles wormed their way through the point-defense cloud surrounding the colonial vessels, and _Ares_ took more damage. Summers chewed on his upper lip in deep thought. _Ares_ had been a near-wreck after the first major battle, and though she remained a functioning, partially-repaired wreck, it was only a question of when, not if, her point defense would fail and they'd all be frakked. They had to win this thing quickly, protracted battle favored the Cylons, particularly if reinforcements were lurking around.

"Get Andego back on the horn."

"Sir." Isard answered crisply.

"This is _Ares_, Actual." Andego sounded rather preoccupied, but that was to be expected.

"Admiral, these toasters aren't running, and if they call up buddies before we beat them, _if _we beat them..." Summers didn't need to finish that line. "They're probably thinking we're not up to full strength."

"What's your point?" Andego replied. "You don't have the point-defense to hold off these salvos, and _Ares _can't switch to offensive fire while covering both of us, or the civvies behind us." That was a thorny problem. With only the frigate available to escort the civvies out of the combat zone, Andego had to be every certain the raiders were held off successfully. The police frigate had been designed to combat the occasional small-time pirates, something which was a never-ending source of humor aboard Dreadnought, and would have been hard pressed to handle more than a few raiders on its own.

"I'm thinking a bluff, Admiral." Summers' expression turned into one of sadistic glee. "Both of us switch to full offensive fire and move in on that basestar. We might convince them we're in better shape than they're thinking."

"And if you're wrong." Andego asked, pointedly.

"Then at least this will be over quick." Long seconds stretched off, and the bridge crew of _Dreadnought_ held their collective breath. There was a sigh on the other end of the line.

"All right, we'll play it your way, Commander. Turn into forward prows, on my mark. Stay in formation, within the defense envelope." Andego ordered. Sandra held the helm controls and nodded. "5...4...3...2...1... mark!"

Dreadnought shifted in a hard turn, her engines vibrating the entire ship as they pushed forward at flank speed. The basestar, which had simply been lazily casting missiles at the Colonial vessels, suddenly began pumping out a lot more, trying to quickly saturate the flak field, obviously spooked by the sudden offensive move. A hit registered on the damage control panel, but in a twisted sort of way this actually worked to the Colonial's favor. Prow armor was the toughest, thickest armor on both ships, and the Cylons were burning through their missile reserves very fast. They couldn't maintain this rate of fire for long.

"All available batteries, give them everything we've got. Give me a full spread of missiles, too." Summers ordered. Isard winced slightly at the second portion of that order, but complied. Their missile supply was steadily dwindling, and though they could manufacture shells and bullets, missiles had complex guidance systems that could not be replaced.

The Cylons began backing off in a hurry as the Colonial vessels closed, leaving the newly-discovered freighter they had been interested in well enough alone. The basestar began to take heavy damage, shells impacting along its center-axis, and missile impacts going up along the blades. _Dreadnought_ took a savage hit to the bow in reply, and the ship shook down to her bones.

"That was damned close to one of the main batteries, Cap'n. We've got atmospheric venting and frame buckling." Jack's voice betrayed his concern, the damage must have been serious, but he continued his work. _Ares _took a similarly bad hit which holed her topside, leaving air leaking out from repairs that hadn't held up to the strain of renewed combat. For as bad as they were being hit, the damaged Cylon was obviously not having an easy time of it either, and its commander, or whatever controlled the behemoths, finally decided to jump away.

"That shouldn't have worked." Andego came over the wireless. "Remind me never to play cards with you."

"What about this freighter they were boarding?" Summers asked.

"Seems far too convenient to me, Commander." Andego's voice came back sullen.

"More convenient than a battleship appearing out of nowhere?"

"Point taken, Commander. However, I don't like it. Keep your guns trained on her. Some of those boarders might have made it on board... send one of your pilots over with that assault shuttle of yours." Andego ordered, silencing the comms.

"Sir, I'd have to recommend Stalker for this one." Isard said simply.

"Thought you didn't trust her." Jack answered before Summers could reply.

"Still don't, sir. But it's like she said, she's a sneaky sort of bitch. Might be handy if there are any toasters on that freighter." Isard shrugged. "Besides, she should still be on board, her bird hadn't launched yet."

"I suppose I don't have to tell anyone... the toasters are going to be back, with more friends, sooner or later." Summers reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask of Sandra's Swill, taking a long pull. If any Colonial officers were concerned about their pirate Commander's drinking habits, they wisely didn't show it.

"Docking bay... yes, get me Stalker on the line immediately, I need her to..." Summers ignored the rest of the orders coming from his XO, offering the flask to Jack.

"No thanks Cap'n, brought my own." Jack smiled, producing his own flask. That definitely got a reaction from some of the bridge crew. In their minds Summers was something of an exception to their normal rules, a special case, earned by essentially allowing his ship to be drafted into the fleet. And so his quirks and drinking habits were generally ignored. But Major Jack Stanton was supposed to be ex-fleet, and was generally expected to know better.

"Think it's a Cylon trick?" Summers asked, to no one in particular.

"No idea, Cap'n. Seems pretty damned weird. We got real lucky with stumbling across _Ares_ and all, but you get lucky twice, and you start to wonder."

"Stalker's launching the gunboat." Isard looked up from the receiver for a moment. "Going to coordinate with Ares' marines."

"Wonder what's on board." One of the officers mused.

"Maybe it's a prison ship full of chicks." A pirate crewman offered, staring at the DRADIS console with an expression of interest on his unshaven face. "That'd be hot."

"Hell, Frank, I thought you was into men." Came a challenge from one of the other pirates. "Least ways that what Sandra was telling me."

"I said no such thing." Sandra stated flatly, looking up over the helm. "Wouldn't doubt it though."

"Yeah?" This time it was one of the Colonial officers. "I can't see anything other than a Tauron prostitute giving either of you a good time."

"Hey, nothing wrong with payin' for it when you got the cubits." The one named Frank answered. "Now if there are any women-folk on that ship... least we got Sandra's booze to trade for 'em."

"Shut the frak up, all of you, I'm trying to give frakking orders here, this isn't a Godsdamned whore house!" Isard yelled, covering the phone's receiver.

"Boss?" Frank beseeched. But Summers was unsympathetic to the man's plight. After all, he had his own squeeze, even if Sandra had been rather moody lately. Still, it was a problem he'd have to look into sooner or later. It wasn't like he could just drop the ship off in orbit around a planet full of strippers, like the old days. Perhaps traditional Colonial officers didn't have to worry about this sort of thing, but it was definitely a problem for his men. And the women aboard the freighters, under Graystone's unofficial leadership, seemed more interested in the prim, proper officers of the God of War, not the dirty dregs of the Booze Bucket.

"Better listen to the man, unless you want to draw toilet duty." That bought a level of immediate cooperation. The rations salvaged from the first-war wreckage were viable, but rather hard on digestive systems unaccustomed to them. The plumbing in _Dreadnought _was one of the most poorly maintained systems on the entire ship, too, even with the jury-rigged water recycling equipment hooked up to it. And there was a chronic shortage of toilet paper. Nobody in their right mind wanted to draw that duty.

…**...**

Elena cursed. The pirate's assault shuttle handled like a bus and the controls were, quite possibly, arranged in the most uncomfortable layout possible. It was as if someone had just taped the whole thing together at the last minute. Which, given the pirates work habits, probably wasn't far from the truth. How Summers flew one of these things into battle, Elena would never know. But the craft did have the advantage of rather hap-hazard armor welded all over it, and structural bracing that seemed somewhat solid. The thing might even take a hit or two and keep flying, however badly she flew.

"_Ares_, on approach to the freighter. Visual inspection indicates she is the _Jupiter's Bounty, _out of Picon_._ Seems to be standard bulk freighter configuration, heavy damage on the port side, portions are opened to space. That's the boarders likely entry point. We're entering topside, forward of the bridge."

"Roger that, Stalker."

Marines filled the cargo area of the shuttle, many more than would fit on a Raptor, and Elena found herself wondering why no one at Colonial Fleet Command had thought of building a _proper_ craft like this, a small, general purpose assault transport. Then again, she thought, nobody in Fleet had any real interest in boarding toaster ships. In the first war, it had been simply a quest for mutual annihilation. You killed Cylon ships and stations, you didn't bother capturing them.

"We have a green seal, _Ares_. Initiating boarding action."

Torches immediately appeared as the marines got to work. Metal fell with a hollow sound, and battle-rifles immediately pointed into the entry way.

"Clear. Charles, you're on point." Colonel Nash indicated, leading the boarding party. "Lieutenant, stay here unless ordered otherwise. We're closing your hatch on our side." The plan had been arranged beforehand, but nobody seemed to mind telling her the same thing twice, or more. She laughed for a moment at the insanity of it all. The world had ended, the Colonies were so much smoke and cinder, and all she could think about was how frakking stupid her superior officers were. Her thoughts started with the idiot pirate-turned-commander, right on down to _Ares_' XO who felt this pressing need to repeat every order for absolutely no reason she could fathom.

Gunfire echoed through the hull, still attached to her hatch. Even closed she could hear the screams and the sounds of battle, and she sat up with a start. Toasters must have made it on board after all.

"Colonel, what's your situation?"

"Stay put, Lieutenant. We scrapped a couple of toasters. Seems like some of these things are like the normal metal variety." The sounds of battle faded and she forced herself to relax.

"Wooo we hit the mother lode!" One of the marines screamed into his com.

"Cut the chatter. Stalker, get me a comm channel to _Ares_."

"Sir. Link established."

"Admiral, we have some serious supplies down here. Food rations, medical supplies, hydroponics equipment and even some small arms. Everything but the kitchen sink, sir." Nash's excitement was plain, some real food rations would do wonders for morale. _Ares_ had been due for a resupply before the war had started, and wasn't as well stocked as she should have been. _Dreadnought _was worse, stocked with booze, 40 year-old rations and the only drugs on board were probably of the illegal variety.

"Seems too easy, sir." Elena chimed in.

"Say again, Lieutenant." Andego replied.

"We're short on all this stuff, and the Cylons have to know it. So they dangle a nice pretty freighter in front of us, run away after a short fight to make it look good and leave a couple of easy-to-kill toasters behind." Elena pointed out the obvious, for about the fifth time today.

"Any survivors?" The Admiral inquired.

"Three, sir. Lots of bodies though. Only survivors were on the bridge, who managed to get their suits on before the breach. Looks like the toasters were about to break through when we got here." Nash answered.

"Get them out and -" Andego began, but Elena's voice interrupted angrily.

"They frakking look like us, sir. Why isn't anyone listening to me?"

"I listen to all my officers, Stalker. But interrupt me again and you'll report for plumbing duty on Dreadnought." _Which is way worse than hack,_ Elena thought. Still, there had to be something she could do to prove how terrible of an idea this was.

"Colonel." The Admiral began, but the tone caught Elena's interest, there was something wistful in it, regretful. Maybe the Admiral wasn't as dumb as his exec, she found herself thinking. "What is the status of their ship's systems?"

"Their engines are in good shape, though their FTL computer has had it. Nothing wrong with the drive itself, though. The hull has some holes where it was boarded, along the port side, but they could be patched, sir. The damage isn't as bad as it looks." Nash rattled off.

"Give them the FTL computer from the shuttle, Colonel, and leave them a welder."

"Sir?"

"You heard the orders. We're moving out."

…...

One had just about had it with the humans. Two days aboard this freighter had weighed heavily upon him, their stink was everywhere aboard this filthy vessel, and he found himself almost wishing he had opted for a sleeper agent program instead of going into this thing fully conscious of it. But that wouldn't do, all of the sleeper agents that had resurrected thus far had been mental head cases of conflicting personalities. Some might even have to be boxed at some point in the future. And no one else among the Cylons had wanted to volunteer for sleeper agent duty after that debacle.

Some models had thought it would be better to dangle a damaged freighter in deep space, without any "attack" in progress, but it had been decided that an attack would make it marginally more believable. Plotting probable jump locations and have an attack in progress at each, well that was harder, and One hadn't honestly thought it would be his group that would have the dubious honor of being spies. It'd be better for him if another One could risk the headache and pain of resurrection. Hadn't he gone through it enough?

The human Colonel regarded him curiously for a moment, then the expression changed into something less welcoming. One knew this whole thing would look suspicious, trying to get agents on board a fleet after it had escaped was bound to be more difficult than simply being there ahead of time. But, both agents he had in place had been eliminated too early, and this was his last real option. _Galactica'_s fleet still contained a few agents, enough to help him track the errant fleet. _Ares_ and _Dreadnought_, however, might very well slip out of their tracking net soon if something wasn't done about it.

"Sir, we're going to leave you with a new FTL computer and..." The Colonel began.

"You're leaving us?" One put a bit of a shaky, pleading tone in his voice, but not too much. He was supposed to be a hardened freight driver, accustomed to the dirty work of the colonies. Albeit, one who had seen most of his crew killed.

"We just can't trust you sir."

"Why should trust be a problem?" His assistant, a Two, added. The Two had been warned to avoid too much of his metaphysical inclinations. This was a simple job, One thought, it didn't need to be ruined by an ill-timed speech about God and how he connected to the water.

"The Cylons look like us, now. You could be an agent." The Colonel replied, but the man was clearly disturbed by this turn of events.

"We're not toasters, Colonel." One said, as if stating the blatantly obvious. Which, in fact, was quite literally true. He was not a bread-cooking device, and found the very comparison rather offensive. "And you can't just leave us out here to die. At least bring us aboard, we'll work hard, you can even put us behind bars if you want, just don't leave us defenseless!"

The Colonel shifted uncomfortably, quite obviously unnerved with the whole idea of leaving people behind. One felt the odor of victory, if the Colonel could talk the Admiral out of his order...

…**...**

"... they are offering to go directly the brig, sir, until our doctor can examine them." Nash was offering.

"No, Colonel. Carry out your orders."

"We can't just leave people to die, sir."

The conversation back and forth between the Colonel and the Admiral lasted far too long for Elena's taste, and she found herself open the hatch and dropping onto the deck of the freighter. Sometimes things just had to be done.

"Colonel I think we can solve this problem pretty easily." Elena stated proudly.

"I ordered you to stay about the shuttle!"

"Yes sir, you did, and since you're _soooo _good at carrying out orders from a superior officer, I'll happily obey once I've blown this toaster to space." That bought her just a moment's surprise from the Colonel, and she made her move. She jerked her sidearm out and aimed it square at the freighter captain's forehead with sudden, rapid movement. Her focus never left the man's face, staring for any hint of fright. Fear was a human emotion, and however good the software inside might have been, just how much of a fear response would be built into that machine? Could a machine even die, or fear death? The Admiral had mentioned something about their prisoner being able to download into a new body at a whim. Interrogation had revealed that much, at least. Maybe it was true.

There was a shudder of fear that wracked the man's body, but it seemed like it came too late, as if the the man hadn't expected this move, and just hadn't had time to program the proper response fast enough. Fight or Flight was at the core of what it meant to be human, or at least so the base commander at Basic had told her. This man had neither. This man wasn't a man at all. And even if he was, it was too bad for him. Quite simply, Elena had no desire to die today because of one more idiotic 'superior' officer. Hack or no hack, toilet duty or not, she had her own mission to perform.

…**...**

Less than a second had passed, but One suddenly knew he had failed and that he was about to experience another headache. Well, there was always the brute force solution to this problem, certainly enough basestars remained to deal with this fleet the hard way. There was a grudging acceptance of his situation, not the nagging fear humans experienced. The pilot's finger began to pull backwards, and time slowed...


	13. Chapter 13

...The headache was worse than expected, and One felt his control slipping. Anger welled up within him, not just the mere annoyance which had been all too common since the attack began. There were others surrounding his birthing tank, but he paid no attention to their pithy words of comfort. Shoving a Six out of the way, he gathered himself to his feet, dripping organic ooze all over the polished floor of the resurrection ship.

Alarms sounded in his mind, sudden worry interrupting his angry thoughts. He hadn't escaped the humans after all, he'd simply been shot by that upstart pilot aboard the freighter, and had been transplanted to the other front of the same war.

"Frak." It was all he could think of to describe this singular moment of insanity. The windows of the resurrection ship offered a pristine view of two battlestars launching fighters. It could only be _Galactica_ and _Pegasus_. The others around him began to panic as the FTL drive aboard ship suddenly detonated out of nowhere, stranding them there.

One's mind interfaced with the ship's computer, taking command of the basestars assigned to guard the vessel. He was no military tactician, none of the Cylons were, really, except for the older models still staffing the Colony. Without overwhelming superiority in numbers, he could not be confident of victory. Not like this. It was the entire reason the attack on the Colonies required so much subterfuge, the Colonial military had become truly gigantic relative to its population. In the first war there had been a mere twelve battlestars, some obsolescent battleships and that bizarre hybrid _Atlantia_. And that small fleet had fought the Cylons to draw. By the time the Cylons had infiltrated the Colonial fleet it had become apparent that the humans had built over 120 battlestars and numerous smaller vessels. But it had also become apparent that they had failed to learn the most critical lesson from the first war... over-automation would be the death of them.

Now it appeared the Humans had learned enough to survive, and One felt the fear of death, true, final death overtake him. He interfaced with the computer, ordering the basestars to covering positions, keeping their flanks secure.

"Where the frak are my raiders?" One demanded. The interface told him even before the others replied, and he cringed. The humans with _Galactica_ had lured them out of position.

It was a Six who replied. "There were some colonial civilian ships and..."

"You bungling morons." One answered. It was true he was no tactician, but he inherited the role because his 'brothers and sisters' were so frakking terrible at it he got the role by default. That was a thing he blamed on the Final Five, his creators. They had been so obsessed with the concept of peace with humanity that they didn't think to program in some kind of tactical genius to go along with them. There weren't enough Ones to go around, for some reason it was far more economical to grow Sixes and Eights in vast numbers, something about the programming matrix. In any event, he found himself as the only One in this small fleet, which was fortunate. It would turn a complete rout into...

...well, a complete rout, One thought. Pegasus and Galactica were tearing one of the basestars to pieces with their heavy guns. Interference was ridiculous out there as Pegasus' EM pulse generators misguided his missile attacks, sending them flying into space.

"Turn the missile guidance computers off. Pre-program coordinates." One ordered. The missiles, like all Cylons, were a form of intelligence in their own. To seek and destroy targets was their only purpose, and they actually _wanted_ to die. But their sensors were prone to interference. They could be fooled, sent off target. With pre-programmed detonation points, Pegasus' advanced pulse generators could be counteracted. He smiled with satisfaction as missiles began to impact the larger battlestar, but even so, the move came too late. Screams flooded the interface as the first basestar began to break apart. Vipers were streaming through the shattered defense net as the basestar's launchers, ordinarily able to easily screen against fighter attack, fell silent.

"There are too many fighters." Six stated, perspiration forming on that soft face.

"We've lost almost half our launchers." A Five followed up, but there was no need for talking now. One was connected directly to the baseship's hybrid, and he felt her pain as her ship, an extension of her body, was torn to pieces around her.

Death was reaching for them all, and with it, something far worse than a mere headache. This was non-existence knocking. The changes to the missile salvos had produced some damage to _Pegasus_, but _Galactica _was too far away, and the basestar was still falling apart. Heavy, timed salvos from _Galactica _began to tear apart the baseship more methodically. Alarms sounded in his mind, Cylons screaming as they died, only to be downloaded here, just in time for a second, more permanent death.

"My God." A Five said as the first basestar exploded. The defense net was now wide open. One basestar could not guard against this many. Vipers streamed through the gaping hole in their missile net, heading straight for the resurrection ship.

"Evacuate!" One ordered, running towards the docking bay. There was a heavy raider there, perhaps he could reach it in time to...

Alarms blared as bullets tore into the hull of the vessel, but One paid no attention to them, caught in the sprint. If a human had seen a supposedly old man run so fast, it would have provoked incredulity, but he was a Cylon, a superior species. That he should have been even _more_ superior unnerved him. If his creators hadn't been so obsessed with being human, maybe they could have given him legs that ran faster, sensors that saw more, anything other than this fleshy construct.

The heavy raider was there, but his compatriots who had been running beside him were no where to be seen. Dead or dying as the ship began to break apart, no doubt. He had to escape, of all the Ones, he was the most experienced battlefield commander, and they would need him now. He knew the truth of his situation: the humans were done being fooled by sabotage and infiltration. Now, they would need brute force to get the job done, but applied cleverly. It would take weeks, maybe months, to get another resurrection ship prepped and jumped out this far.

The heavy raider shot out of the docking bay just as the resurrection ship exploded into flesh and metal wreckage. Thousands of Cylons died, and he felt the sudden cries of terror in his mind.

"All survivors, JUMP!" One ordered into the heavy raider's interface. But it was too late, even, for that. Some of the raiders had made it back into position, but they were taking heavy losses, deprived of the protective umbrella of their basestar. The second baseship had already lost FTL drive and was rapidly succumbing to both battlestars' offensive fire. One's fist hit the controls and he vanished into the unknown. Only a few raiders made it with him. It was only then that he realized, he still didn't have any clothes on. Anger welled up within him again at these useless human needs.

…**...**

"Just what the frak did you think you were doing?" Andego's voice was filled with anger. Colonel Nash stood before him at full attention, saying nothing. "I gave you a direct order to leave that ship."

"Sir, I didn't want to leave people to..."

"Shut your frakking mouth. I can't believe I have to tell _you _the consequences of disobeying orders." Andego ordered. That order, at least, the Colonel seemed willing to follow. This was a reversal of the way things used to be. Once, Nash had been the voice of obedient authority, and Andego the risk-taker. The Fall had wrecked many preconceptions in his universe.

"And you..." Andego looked at Elena, who was also at attention, but with just a hint of casual disobedience in her eyes. The Admiral had dealt with many problem officers over his time, and in many ways, Elena reminded him of his younger self. But he'd never been quite _this_ reckless.

"You are damned lucky you were right, Stalker. Damned lucky." Andego finished. The whole fiasco had gone downhill in a hurry. Elena shot the 'captain' of the freighter, and his compatriots immediately fought back. There was a dead marine on the hangar deck, neck broken like a twig, that stood as testament to the unnatural origin of these 'civilians.'

"Yes, sir." Elena's expression twisted in a hint of a smile.

"Get off my ship, Lieutenant. Just be glad your Commander is a pirate and seems to like you for some gods-forsaken reason I cannot fathom."

"Sir?" Elena's expression changed.

"He went to bat for you, Lieutenant. Said something about stopping all shipments of alcohol to my ship if he didn't get his 'psychopathic pilot' back." Andego began. "Like I said, just be glad you were right. You're dismissed."

Elena turned on her heels and walked out, and Nash began to do the same.

"Not you, Colonel. We're going to hash this out."

"Sir?"

"Look, I can't have an XO questioning my orders, for one. But more importantly, you've got to understand that we aren't just fighting in line-action battles out here. We're fighting infiltration, sabotage. There could be more Cylons among us, and we have to make harsh calls. Calls that maybe sacrifice a few in the name of preserving our frakking species. I'm choosing to forgive this transgression, Colonel. Just this once. I won't forget it, however."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry I disappointed, sir." Nash's voice trembled a bit with sincerity.

"Now," Andego allowed a bit of a smile to cross his features. "Get out, before I change my mind."

…...

"Cap'n, our salvage teams are working double-time out there. Seems like every time we fix something, the toasters just come by and blow our work up." Jack explained, sitting in the comfort of Summers quarters. By the standard of any battlestar, Summers' quarters were downright luxurious, in many ways. The old recliner which had been removed from CIC had found its way down here, and the private beer tap, containing the last of their kegs of Caprican Ale, featured prominently. But there were other changes too, the Major thought. Monitors and computer readouts were new, tied into CIC systems, giving Summers a constant stream of data on his warship. Sandra's personal effects had somehow made it into the quarters too, and Jack was a little surprised at that. The salvage captain wasn't noted for close attachments to women. The fall had changed much in the man, that was apparent.

"We don't have a choice, Jack," Summers replied, pouring some of the precious ale for the Major. Jack frowned a little, but accepted it. This was the last of the good stuff, he knew, and they wouldn't be getting any more. Sandra's Swill was drinkable, if barely, but he'd miss his old drinks.

"I know, Cap'n. Believe me, I know. But we gotta do somethin' about morale, and soon. Look, right after the fall, survival instinct kicked in, ya know? People runnin' off adrenaline. It's all gone now, and they've started to realize, when you get right down to it, space just frakkin' sucks. 'Specially when workin' 16 hour shifts." Jack took a sip of the ale and tried to let himself relax for a moment. But he'd been out there with the rest of them, running the work crews ragged, keeping both capital ships flying.

"I'd be lying if I said I had any idea of what we should be doing, at this point." Summers answered.

"And you can tell _me_ that, Cap'n. But I'd suggest stowin' that shit around the others. This is supposed to be a dictatorship, this ship. _You're_ the Captain. They figure you better damn well know what to do, and it better involve somethin' other than them workin' to death for once." The glass was nearly empty now, Jack reflected sadly. But times were changing. They'd have to adapt, or die.

"Yeah, you're right enough about that. Well, let's do this then: those civvies over there in the freighters, they need to do some heavy lifting too. Get Graystone over here, and start training more of those lazy frakkers. Lots of 'em." Summers pointed out, relishing his own glass of ale with obvious delight.

"We'll still be workin' our teams hard, Cap'n, trying to train and repair at once."

"True, but like you said... this is a dictatorship. And at least this way, they'll see that we do give a frak about them, and we're getting them some help. We can't stop the repair work, not for a minute, Jack. Or we're dead."

For his part, Jack merely nodded, taking in the last of his ale. It was going to be hard, pushing the crew like that, but it was possible the prospect of relief workers _eventually_ taking over some of that work would be enough to prevent all-out mutiny. But there would be grumbling, dissatisfaction, and the morale still wouldn't be exactly good.

"And Jack?" Summers began, the Major looking back at him with a degree of wistful sadness.

"Yeah, Cap'n?"

"This last keg of ale... honestly, it's almost full. Haven't really touched it since the fall. Saving it, you know? Roll it down the docking bay for the men. Give 'em something better to drink."

Jack smiled. That was definitely something the men would be thankful for. Still, he was hoping there'd be some female 'volunteers' among Graystone's civvies. If that could be arranged, that might fix all of the morale problems on board. And, in the long-term, might be critical in helping the human species stay around a bit longer. But Jack's thoughts wandered to the jar of Sandra's Swill on Summers' desk.

"Yeah... leave the good stuff for the men... but that stuff there ain't good for anything other than cleanin' engines and forgettin' bad times." Jack reached for it. "That swill is always fair game."

"Sure is, if you don't mind atrocious hangovers." But when Jack poured two shots, Summers didn't hesitate to grab his. "Me? Guess I'm getting used to 'em." Summers stated.

Ellison's face was stuck in Jack's mind, though, a thing no amount of drink could entirely banish from his memory. He'd frakked a machine, a toaster, a murderous thing. Maybe Graystone's civvies would have some women for the men, but Jack wasn't likely to enjoy any of them. Not sober, at any rate.

_She said she loved me, _he remembered. And he didn't believe it then anymore than he did now, but there was that unspoken question anyway. Could a machine love anything? And just how human were these things? And what happened to men who found themselves pining over a toaster? He took another drink. It didn't help.


	14. Chapter 14

**One Month Later**

Blood dripped from her face, pooling on the surface of the holding cell as the Six glared at her tormentor resolutely. Jack Stanton lorded over her, the crimson-stained pipe relaxed on his shoulder, the smile of his face one of cruel, sadistic pleasure.

"Now, toaster, you will tell me what I need to know."

A pair of marines flanked the older officer, weapons drawn, aimed for the prisoner in case her Cylon strength somehow overwhelmed her shackles. Everyone knew of the massive casualties this thing had caused. _Ares_ had once led a battlegroup of smaller vessels on patrol... none of those ships survived the exodus from the colonies, courtesy of the synthetic creature laying prone on the floor. But, for Jack, this was a more personal affair. She had hurt _him._ And now he was going to hurt her back.

"Where is the Cylon Fleet? Where have they gone?" Jack demanded, raising the pipe again. "Tell me, you frakkin' oversized microwave. TELL ME!"

The pipe connected with her leg, and even the marines winced with the sound of breaking bone. Jack didn't stop there, however, slamming it down on her back, connecting with her head. A howl ripped from Jack's throat, a primal, inhuman thing.

"MAJOR!" Andego's voice demanded immediate obedience, shattering Jack's rage.

"Sorry, sir. Nothin' new to report. This... thing refuses to answer any question." Jack snapped to attention, letting the pipe dangle at his side, blood dripping onto the bare metal beneath.

"You've done enough damage. I want that thing ALIVE. Do you understand me?" Andego stood resolute, and Jack knew that wasn't the time to argue with his superior.

"Yes, sir."

"Get a doctor in here. Have the leg set. But don't worry about the pain killers." Andego's smile echoed Jack's own sense of cruelty. The Major thought it through. The Admiral may want the Cylon intact, and without permanent damage, but that was all. Certainly, the Admiral did not desire the creatue to live in any sort of comfort. His job done, Andego continued onward, leaving the reinstated Major alone with the Marines and the toaster, again.

"Yes, sir." Jack whispered to the closing hatch, looking back at the creature on the deck. "With any luck, the doc will let me set your leg myself. You won't like that much." And then the machine shattered his world with a single look, a single phrase. Her eyes were filled with tears, but not tears of pain or hatred.

"I forgive you, Jack. I still love you." The Six said. Even the normally hardened marines drew back. This was going to end badly, they knew. The expression on Jack's face shifted into pure rage...

…**...**

Commander Thomas Summers sat opposite the Admiral, lazily sipping on his cup of barely palatable swill. The Admiral reflected on his companion. The man slouched visibly, he looked like he'd never had good posture, something that was entirely overrated in his world. But the expression on his face was a hard one, and Mark Andego knew he wasn't going to like whatever the old pirate had to tell him.

"I've never been one for formalities, Commander. Speak your piece." Andego stated simply.

"Me neither. Obviously. Just don't shoot the messenger, okay?" Summers asked.

"Shooting messengers? No." Andego began. "Airlocking? Depends." He chuckled a moment. But the pirate wasn't laughing. _Oh, frak._ It was the only thing the Admiral could think that described the situation. A worried Summers was bad. A worried Summers that didn't respond to a joke was downright terrifying. In the last month, a sort of working understanding had passed between them, with Andego taking the lead in the matters of grand military strategy, but with Summers more or less beating the civilians into line and directing the repair and day-to-day operations of their little fleet.

"Look, dunno how to say this any other way but blunt, so just going with that. _Ares_ is a wreck, Admiral, and we can't fix her." Summers stated flatly.

"I know she isn't pretty, taken a lot of damage, but we're still jumping, still fighting." Andego replied.

"Yes, you are, but not for much longer." Summers said, passing a couple of photographs across the Admiral's desk. "These are pictures from your primary longitudinal supports, near the center of the ship. You can see the rippling on them."

"Never seen anything like that..." Andego's brow furrowed. He had risen from the seat of a viper to command a battlestar, and his engineering background was terrible at best. He knew enough to direct damage control teams, of course, but the gritty mechanics of it was best left to the knuckle-draggers and yarddog engineers.

"And you wouldn't. Any ship with damage like this would most likely be scrapped. At the very least, it would be subjected to an overhaul taking _months_ of yard work, if not over a year." Summers began. "You took multiple nuclear blasts in your center, topside. The armor plates held, mostly, but the pressure on the longitudinal axis caused metal fatigue and warping along those supports. They are now exceptionally weak. Another bad hit topside, in the right spot, and the ship will probably break in two."

"Why hasn't Chief Dorsett mentioned any of this?" Andego asked.

"In over her head, that's why. Smart lady, that one. Nice tits, too, damn nice. But she's used to fixing vipers, not large-scale repair work like this. She saw the damage, but didn't realize what it really meant." Summers gave up sipping the swill and just gulped it down, reaching for the jar again.

"And what _does_ it mean." Andego's impatience got the better of him.

"It means one of these jumps will, most likely, snap the ship's keel like a twig. Seen it happen before in my world. I can't tell you when it will come, but it _is_ coming. I had my people install bracing, and we lashed the worst supports with armor plating literally wrapped around the damage sections, that'll buy us time. But eventually, this ship is going to break her back. You can extend that time by trying to take any hits you can't avoid in the bow or stern areas, those supports are still good. It's in the center that you can't afford additional damage."

"You can't replace the damaged supports?" Andego asked, feeling like a schoolboy who had skipped engineering class. _I never did get good marks in the Academy engineering courses,_ he thought. He'd always had his sights set on becoming a Viper jockey, and eventually landing a battlestar command.

"They extend the whole height of the ship, Admiral. And worse, there's actually compression there. This means that the ship's z-axis dimensions have actually been reduced, compressed downward. I can't pull them out outside of a shipyard, and I can't take out individual sections without making the compression damage worse. The ones we could replace have been replaced. The rest... lashing and reinforcing is the best we can do. And that's where we're going to have a failure, sooner or later. There is one thing you can do to increase the ship's lifespan, though."

"Reduce the grav field?" That, Andego had read about. Heavily damaged ships could collapse under the weight of their own grav field, that put stresses on their supports. There were many stories of ships during the Cylon war that had operated on reduced gravity in an effort to limp home. But reducing a grav field too much caused all sorts of problems for the crew.

"Yes. But that will only prolong the ship's life. It won't prevent the end." Summers downed another shot of the swill, but didn't bother to refill his glass. "And we still don't know where the frak the Cylons went."

"Jack's been working on our prisoner, but at this rate, there won't be much left of her, it, whatever..." Andego replied.

"I wish the toaster would sing. Two weeks, no Cylons... and you know what, Admiral? That just scares the shit out of me. They're up to something."

"Agreed. Makes me wonder, if we ever find Kobol, if they won't just have a battlefleet waiting for us there, too." The Admiral took a shot of his own.

"Probably. Who the frak knows, anymore."

"Our trailing Raptors haven't sighted anything. Either we lost them, or they're tracking us some other way. And you know, Admiral Nagala once said of the Cylons, either they're gone, or they're thinking up something really nasty. We all know how _that _turned out." Andego added.

"Truth. But I'm not done with my bad news." Summers stated darkly. "Our rations aren't going to hold out more than another month or so. The freighters are consuming too damned much."

"I've been monitoring that myself. And actually have an idea. You know, my father was a farmer."

"Thought you were Caprican." Summers stated. "Never heard of a Caprican farmer."

"I am, was, whatever... But no, he was an algae farmer. One of the pioneers behind building Caprica's orbital farms. A lot of the environmental whackjobs loved the idea, leave the planet natural, grow food someplace else. Of course it tastes like crap, so the idea didn't catch on as well as it might have. But I don't see any reason why we can't do it here. I've drawn up some plans for converting a freighter to our algae-farming ship. Some hydroponics too, we have the water and seed for it."

"What do you need from us?" Summers asked. _Sharp one,_ Andego thought. The pirate seemed to be rather difficult to surprise.

"We need lighting, large vats, and we need to manufacture the supplemental hydroponics bays. We have enough seed and raw algae, courtesy of one of the cargo holds, assuming we don't eat it all in the mean time." The Admiral finished his last glass of the swill and set it down on the table.

"Look, Admiral. We gotta eat, but there's got to be an accounting."

"What do you mean, Commander?" Andego used the title deliberately.

"My men, they're fixing everything, still manning Dreadnought in battle, and now you want us to build food-processing equipment out of our scraps. I get it, we die otherwise. I'm not stupid. But even with the civvies helping us as a labor force, I don't have enough men. Not without driving them to mutiny, anyway."

"Mutiny?"

"Yeah, it's like they say in the corridors around _Ares._ We're salvagers. One step above outright pirates. Not military, no matter what uniform I wear. They _will_ mutiny if pushed too hard." Summers voice was unwavering.

"I can fix that, but I don't think you're going to like it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Andego began. "I'll lend you some of _Ares' _crew. They can take over a lot of the crewing duties, freeing your men for this project. That way they don't pull double duty."

"You're right. I don't like it. She's my ship." Summers began. "Not going to just swap out crews for the hell of it. The refugees from _Zeus_? No problem. There weren't enough of them to really threaten us. And the civvies were no threat. But more?"

"You're going to have to start trusting me at some point, Commander." Andego pointed out.

"Yeah. Doesn't mean I have to like it. I don't like trusting people, Admiral." Summers poured a shot, slammed it and began to walk out, not waiting to be dismissed. "Never did. Send your men. We'll get it done." He finished, closing the hatch behind him.

…**...**

Sandra had spent long hours pouring over the ancient scrolls, searching for any hint of the old route the Caravan had taken from Kobol. They'd followed the general direction indicated by scrolls this far, but they seemed to be drawing a blank now. For some time, the caravan had simply drifted in deep space, before some mysterious force had guided them to their new home. But that simply didn't make sense, the old constellations of the Colonies, and even the number of tribes, seemed to indicate that the original inhabitants of Kobol knew of the colony worlds somehow.

_All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again._

Her brain latched on to the truth, finally. They had been searching for the colony worlds much as she had been searching for Kobol. They knew the worlds existed because their ancestors had been there before, but not the exact route. She was reading the directions backwards, as they had discovered landmarks in space. She began reading the verses in reverse order, and suddenly things began to make sense.

"Frak me..."

"I can do that." Summers waltzed in, back from his meeting aboard _Ares._

"No time, Captain. I know the way to Kobol."

"What?"

"Yes," she started rumbling through the recon photos. "Look at this. The world of fire between two flames." She pointed to a photo of a volcanic planet, charred, caught in an uneasy, strange orbit around binary stars.

"I'll be damned..." Summers said. "But we already passed it."

"The scrolls have the course in reverse. They weren't telling us how to get to Kobol, they were telling us how they found the Colonies."

"But it says here, to find the world of the ancestors..."

"I know that, Captain. Consider the cycle of time, and all that nonsense."

"Meaning, the twelve tribes came from the colonies, settled Kobol, frakked up somehow and wound up tracing their way back?" Summers voice was incredulous. This would have been heretical as all hell to any priest, and they both knew it.

"Yes. Maybe more than once. Somehow a splinter group fled the entire cycle, though, heading to Earth before the final the final cataclysm. Whatever that was." Sandra said.

"Earth is a myth."

"No. No, I don't think it is. I think this cycle, or whatever it is, keeps happening, and each time, some people head out on their own, and others head back to some place they know." Sandra's voice took on the tone of a lecturing professor. "Anyway, I guess it all doesn't matter. If we want to find Kobol, the _previous _landmark was a dying red star, and a planet nearly as large... and I think I've found that, too. We're not far, Captain. Not far at all. Only a few more jumps, and we'll be there."

"Well, hurry up and get me coordinates. The sooner we find this ball of metaphysical dirt, the sooner I can tell the Admiral to go frak himself with this food idea of his." Summers said dryly.

"Captain?"

"Nevermind. How about we just frak?" Summers shoved the supposedly sacred scrolls out of the way, and Sandra felt herself smile a bit. Once again, a priest would have screamed blasphemy, but it wasn't like angels were hanging around, watching them, was it?


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note: **I've received some inquiries about rank aboard Dreadnought, mainly that some of the characters refer to Summers as "Captain" and others as "Commander." This is deliberate. The salvagers have always referred to their leader as "Captain" and his drafting into the fleet doesn't change this at all. In fact, they emphasize this, as a way of holding on to their identity. The military personnel are more likely to refer to his fleet rank, of Commander, even if it was merely a formality designed to establish chain of command. Jack Stanton, given his status as reactivated ex-fleet, is using his previous rank of Major, formally restored by the Admiral.

…**...**

_The planet was strange, unfamiliar in every sense, and somehow Summers knew, it was impossibly distant, a land untouched by Colonial or Cylon. Vast empty swathes of virgin land lay unspoiled before him, stretching out into a horizon devoid of high technology. Some might have known it as a beautiful place, a wonder of natural beauty, but Summers didn't care for these things. To him, beauty was the deck of his greasy, grimy vessel, so battered only he could love her. Beauty was technology, machines, and them he understood._

"_Do you?" The Six's sexy voice whispered in his ear._

"_Yeah, I do. Doesn't mean I'm a toaster lover." This time, Summers knew it for what it was, a dream, a nightmare, whatever it was, a false reality. "But that doesn't matter. You're no Cylon, are you?"_

"_Very perceptive of you." The Six was dressed in the overalls Ellison used to wear, grease and oil staining the patched surface, tools dangling from her belt as she walked, impossibly, through the empty green fields of this world._

"_And you're not in my head, either." Summers followed her, shielding his eyes from the star above._

"_How do you know you aren't going crazy? Lost your marbles somewhere in the reaches of space?" Her voice was taunting, laced with insinuation._

"_Because if I'm crazy, there's nothing I can do about it anyway. So what are you?" Summers thought deeply, strangely lucid in this dream. In the sacred scrolls there was mention of them, the Lords of Kobol communicating through dreams, appearing only to those chosen._

"_The Lords of Kobol are a lie. A distorted memory of what actually was. How many tribes are there? 12. How many Cylons? 12. How many of the greater Lords? 12. You don't think this is coincidence, do you?" Her grease-stained hands wrapped around his face as she continued. "Come now, you're a betting man. Consider the odds."_

"_The Lords of Kobol were Cylons." The thought terrified him and he felt his hands wrapping around the Six's throat, squeezing the life out of her, even as she smiled. Her body dropped upon the virgin soil, a drop of blood falling upon the ground. The price of blood had been paid... but this world was not Kobol. With the first violent death, the cycle began again._

…_..._

"Kobol." Sandra's voice echoed across _Dreadnought's_ CIC, the only sound save for the gentle thrumming of the ship's engines and the relentless sweeps of the DRADIS.

"Only one more jump..." Summer mused darkly. Sandra was confused by the old pirate's mood of late, he'd seemed distracted, distant, in a manner that was uncommon even for him. Colonel Isard was no help, either, having dived so deeply into his duties that he seemed to ignore everything else. _Dreadnought _had been chased to the ass-end of space, and her crew was paying for it finally. Kobol should have been hope to the weary crew, it should have been a relief.

"We'll scout the system first." Admiral Andego said, leaning against _Dreadnought'_s tactical display. "Two raptors. And we'll finish the equipment and supply transfers from _Ares._"

"Is that necessary, Admiral? If this is Kobol then why not wait until..." Summers began.

"Yes, Commander, it is. You know as well as I do that we could be walking into a toaster-party." Andego stated flatly. "We just can't take the risk. Work on the food processors will continue, and all non-essential equipment and supplies from _Ares_ will be transferred before the jump."

"Isard, get Stalker in one of those Raptors." Summers ordered, and Andego didn't dispute them, whatever personal dislike he may have had for the maniacal pilot. Truth be told, Sandra thought, nobody liked the pilot, not even Summers, despite sticking his neck out for her. But then Summers tended to dislike most people, it'd certainly taken him long enough to clue in on her advanced, anyway.

"Isn't anyone you know.. excited? Come on." Sandra asked, exasperated with the black mood everyone seemed to be in.

It was the pirate crewman Frank who truly captured it for everyone. "Has anyone here actually _read_ the frakkin' scrolls? Kobol is probably a dump. A nice shithole in space."

"Gotta be better than smelling your sweaty ass, Frank." Kyle, another of the pirates added. "Have you even _used_ your shower rations in the last month? And just what the frak have you been EATING?"

"Stow that shit." Jack ordered.

"I'm tellin' ya, Jack, this asshole has plenty of shit stowed up it." Kyle answered, pointing lazily at Frank. For his part Frank just reached for a flask and took a pull, finishing it off with a belch. Frank was a rather heavyset man, and whatever Kyle's faults, Sandra had to agree with the man's assessment. Frank _did_ smell like shit. Some fresh air would do them all good. A long moment of silence passed.

"Stalker and Snowman are taking our bird out. _Ares_ has launched theirs. They report ready to jump on the Admiral's order." Isard reported mechanically.

"Very well, Colonel. They are cleared to jump." Andego ordered simply.

"Sir, docking bay reports last of the weapons loadouts from _Ares _have been transferred. We still have more personnel transfers to finish, however." Jack reported. Sandra mused at his relative sobriety and professionalism today, which could probably be explained by the Admiral's visit. There was something of the Fleet still left in the Major, and it had actually been growing stronger since the Fall.

"I hope you're right, Sandra." Summers said, glancing at her.

"You don't have to tell me, Captain." But she found the captain's mood infectious. Worry began to creep into her thoughts. Did they lose the Cylons, truly? Were they walking into an ambush? And just what was left on Kobol?

Silence reigned in CIC, and even the normally rowdy crew of _Dreadnought_ felt the pressure. The usual jockeying had stopped, the alcohol had flowed silently, and the DRADIS continued it's constant sweeps.

…...

The planet was beautiful, Stalker thought to herself. From the air, it almost reminded her of home, of floating above Caprica for the first time. The continents matched the descriptions in the scrolls, and she smiled. For the first time in many years, since long before the Fall, Elena felt a measure of peace for a single moment in time. The tumultuous thoughts that plagued her ceased and she stared in wonder at the world of her ancestors.

"Kobol. Land of the Gods." She intoned reverently. Even as she did, however, a bad feeling began to creep into her consciousness.

"And no sign of toasters, either." Snowman reported. "Planet reads habitable. There's some radiological signatures, but not in the danger zone." Snowman was a pilot first and an ECO second, in better times they'd have separate roles for this sort of thing, but the Fall changed many things. There was no one else Elena would rather have riding shotgun, though.

"Trainwreck, what's your situation?" Elena asked into the comm. She wondered for a moment how the _Ares_ Raptor driver had managed to get the callsign, but quickly decided she probably didn't want to know.

"It's habitable.. negative on the toaster party. Nothing else to report really, except that I see scattered ruins on the two major continents. Should we go in for a closer look?" Trainwreck answered. "My ECO says there's some lingering radiation, but it's not bad."

"Negative, Trainwreck. Orders are to sweep for the toaster party and bail."

"Bail, sir?" Trainwreck sounded confused. It took Elena a moment to realize she'd picked up the slang from the pirates. _Been hanging around those clusterfraks for too long,_ she thought.

"Yeah, head for home. Let's do a full orbital sweep, meet back here in 30 minutes, then head home." Elena ordered.

"Yes, sir. Commencing sweep of the polar regions."

Something bothered her, though, and she just couldn't put her finger on it. This was obviously Kobol, but she expected something more, somehow. She didn't know exactly what she'd expected, the scrolls warned that humanity had completely abandoned the rock, but something was still off somehow.

"Lieutenant," Snowman began. "I'm reading some unusual debris in decaying orbit."

"Define unusual."

"Frakking unusual, sir. I mean it could be anything, but there's a lot of it, and it looks to be entering the atmosphere even as we speak. Just seems odd we'd show up to a huge shower of this shit." Snowman replied.

"Could it be from a ship?"

"Sure. It could also be a pile of space rocks. It's all very small stuff. The unusual part is that it's a pretty coherent cloud of it, and that we'd arrive right when it was falling out of orbit."

"Could we inspect visually?" She asked.

"Wouldn't do us any good. Like I said, it's small. Only reason I picked it up is that there's a gods-awful lot of it." Snowman said. "Besides, we'd be risking micro-meteorite damage anywhere near that."

"Noted. Anything else out there?"

"Not from up here. We'd have to do an atmospheric survey to find out more."

"We're not going for that." Elena said, switching the comm back on. "Anything on your end, Trainwreck?"

"Just some odd debris, sir." Trainwreck answered.

"We already saw that. Time to head for home. Spin up the FTL." Even as Snowman hurried to comply, Elena felt that familiar knot in her stomach. Something was very wrong. It was as if the Gods were telling her to leave Kobol alone, to get out of here as fast as she could.

…...

"Commence jump prep." Andego ordered, back within the familiar confines of _Ares_ CIC. The Admiral loved his ship, even in her mortally wounded state. He didn't know when _Ares _would finally give up whatever miracle had held her together, kept her jumping and fighting for so long, but he knew the end was coming soon. Her supports groaned as the drive activated, and Nash winced with the sound. Everyone expected each jump to be her last, but somehow, she soldiered on.

The world stretched thin, the universe folding in on itself as Andego stood, resolute, over the tactical display. His thoughts wandered to his family, long perished in the holocaust of the fall, and he wondered why he even bothered to live on. The initial anger, the need for revenge, had sustained him for so long, but its effects had worn thin, like the universe around them. _Mark..._ A voice seemed to echo in his mind for just a moment, the whispering tones of his wife.

"Sir!" Nash's crisp demeanor replaced it. "Jump complete. No red lines in her supports, either."

"Thank the Gods." Andego replied. They'd survived another jump. He looked at his ship and whispered. "Thank you."

She groaned, and the deck lighting flickered a moment, but despite her complaints, the God of War lived on. They'd analyzed the data from their raptors for the better part of a week, paranoia ran rampant among the fleet since the Cylons had vanished, but finally the call had been made. And there it was, Kobol, the land of the Gods. Silence descended across CIC for a moment, an eerie, reverent thing.

The tactical officer reported. "All ships accounted for, sir. Dreadnought is taking our six."

"XO, Prepare the ground party." Andego ordered.

"Yes, sir." Nash reached for the phone. "Ground party is cleared hot. And launch the CAP."

"Sir?" It was the tactical officer.

"Yes, Mister Jensen?"

"I've got a strange reading at extreme DRADIS range, almost directly above us."

"That's odd. Dispatch two vipers to investigate..." Andego began. And then his world crashed around him.

…...

"My GODS!" Summers barked into the comm.

Over a thousand Cylon raiders jumped in near-simultaneously at extreme weapons range, cluttering the DRADIS display so terribly he wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails of it, were it not for the individual target number data flowing to the batteries. Sandra fell back into her chair with a startling crash, and Isard stared, mouth agape, mid-order.

"Get me the Admiral. Now!" Summers ordered and the comms beeped almost instantly. "Are you seeing this, Admiral?"

"Yes, Commander." The voice was calm, even serene.

"We need to jump, right frakking now."

"We can't. The freighters will need at least 10 minutes to spool up for another jump, even a blind one. You and I... we'll take at least 5, even if we sacrificed them... which I won't do. Make for the small moon. Might buy us some time." Andego's voice remained calm, collected, even as a storm of chatter erupted from _Dreadnought's _CIC, panicked voices of salvagers who had never expected _this_.

"Shut the FRAK up!" Jack fired off his shotgun, shattering the chatter. "Stand to your stations!"

"All batteries, load flak rounds and prepare for contact." Isard ordered, cutting through the echoing blast.

"Helm, bring us about broadside over _Ares. _Flank speed away from the planet. Isard, get our birds out there."

"A basestar just jumped in behind the raiders." Sandra stated. "They are holding position."

"Come to watch the show, I presume." Summers mused darkly, finding his balance again.

"They are launching missiles!" Sandra reported.

"How many?" Isard asked.

"Uh... all of them, I think. Read, eight-hundred plus missiles inbound. Some are nukes."

"Gods..." Jack said.

…...

"Reading 837 missiles inbound, time-to-target... 4 minutes. Split evenly between us and Dreadnought, sir. Radiological alarm." Jensen reported.

"All batteries, commence fire-suppression. Build us an interdiction zone. All Vipers to engage missiles, leave raiders and basestar to us. All other ships are ordered out of the combat zone, course 327, maximum possible speed. Keep us and _Dreadnought_ between the civilians and the attack waves."

"We can't stop that many, sir." Nash said gravely. The Admiral knew they he was right, too. It was an obvious case of overkill, Andego decided. But there was still some measure of hope. That many missiles made it easier for the point defense and flak shrapnel to hit _something._ And controlling eight hundred missiles would have to put a strain on even Cylon guidance systems. The sheer interference generated would help, too, and more missiles would be fooled by ECM than the norm. A far greater percentage of these missiles were going to be shot down than if the Cylons had gone with the normal attack patterns: carefully targeting and analyzing potential holes in point-defense, ECM and fighter deployment, which were then exploited with smaller missile salvos. But quantity had a quality all of its own, they'd never stop all of them. There were enough in that wave to annihilate both capital ships.

"Close with Dreadnought, bring us alongside." Andego ordered. "Set all batteries, auto-fire, full suppression mode."

"Sir?"

"We'll combine our interdiction field... and hopefully take some of the missiles meant for her." Andego stated simply. He reached for the phone, and sudden realization dawned on Nash's face. "This is the Admiral speaking... all hands, abandon ship."

The missiles closed, and the DRADIS flooded with the red of enemies massing together for the attack. Raiders approached behind the missile salvo, and the baseship just hung in space, lazily rotating.

…...

One smiled with obvious pleasure. "Let's see the humans get out of this one, shall we?"

A Six snorted. "You mean like your last two plans? Face it, you're not some grand tactical master. You're just a machine with delusions of Godhood."

"And you aren't?" One replied.

"No. I embrace what I am. It's the only way to feel God's presence in all this."

"A religious machine... imagine that." One mocked. "And what does your God think of my plan, eh?"

"God is love. Not death." Six protested.

"So you'd rather I just let the humans go, eh?"

"Yes." She said simply.

"Well I'm glad you aren't in charge." One smiled, watching in his mind's eye the cloud of missiles approaching their targets.


	16. Chapter 16

Colonel Nash stood defiant, even as the Admiral yelled at him over the din of battery fire, the klaxon of evacuation alarms and the shuffling of a thousand people trying to flee the doomed ship.

"I'm not leaving, sir. I'm going to see this through." Nash stated.

"I don't have time for this." Andego replied, punching the man in the face so unexpectedly, Nash never even suspected it. The Colonel crumpled to the deck, conscious, but dazed by the assault. Proximity alarms started going off everywhere, and a detachment of Marines rushed by CIC.

"Marines!" The Admiral yelled into the corridor. "Get this man to his evacuation point!"

"Sir!" The Marines pulled Nash to his feet, as the Colonel collected himself, blood dripping from his lower lip. In a flash, they were gone. The rigid efficiency of the marines would leave the Colonel no possible argument.

"Commander, you have incoming ships. All Raptors and shuttles are jumping to the rendezvous coordinates. I'm counting on you to recover the Vipers." Andego spoke into the wireless.

The primary batteries blazed into the fray and point defense cannons locked on to the incoming missile cloud, annihilating hundreds of them. For a moment, the wreckage was like a physical wall, and many others missiles were annihilated by the shrapnel from their destroyed fellows. Dreadnought's flak shells joined, destroying still more. Vipers fired off in near-unison, and the missile count steadily dropped. Raptors fired off counter-missiles, and for a moment, the DRADIS console went mad with conflicting readings. Somewhere in that carnage, a nuke locked on to a Viper, and both were reduced to particle vapor by the ensuing explosion. More missiles vanished from the incoming wave, and the radiological alarms went silent, which meant that must have been the last nuke. But it wasn't enough.

Sparks flew from the ECM console as it overloaded, the strain of the EMP blowing through the electronics. The tenuous upper atmosphere of Kobol rained with wreckage, streaming down like the hand of the Zeus.

…...

Six knew what she had to do. Once, she had been called Ellison, and though she never cared for the dirty salvagers of _Dreadnought, _she knew them for what they were. Life. Sentient Life, regardless of the crimes of their ancestors, she could not simply annihilate their entire species. It was a realization that had dawned upon all the Sixes in the aftermath of Caprica Six's download. The others, with the possible exception of the Eights, would never understand, but she had to act. Guilt plagued her awareness, and she couldn't live in denial any longer. She had been evil. She had acted against the will of God.

Her fingers melded with the control interface, and she fed new targeting orders to approximately one-third of the missiles, shifting many of them to attack the covering Vipers. It was defensible, she knew, the others would see it as a poor tactical decision, and she'd be reprimanded by the others. But nothing else was provable. It would give the larger ships a fighting chance to survive, even if at the expense of their fighter pilots. She owed them that much, at least.

"What are you doing?" One demanded.

"Their fighters are covering effectively, I'm eliminating them." Six replied confidently.

"If you spent half the time you waste on religion studying tactics, you'd know how stupid that was. It's the battlestar and the battleship, we want." One replied, yet Six could see the hint of suspicion in his eyes.

…...

The first of many impacts began registering on the damage control panel, and Andego fell to the deck with the vibrations of dozens of concentrated explosions. He had no idea how many missiles had hit. The God of War groaned in protest, her lights flickering, her screens shorting out, her armor plates reduced to scrap. Air circulation lines blew outwards with over-pressurization as the life support system malfunctioned.

"The braces are going!" Chiet Dorsett's voice came over the line. "Her back's broken, sir. I've lost most of the control cabling between fore and aft sections, she's going to break apart."

"Chief, I ordered an evacuation."

"Begging your pardon by FRAK YOU, sir. I've triggered wireless control on the main engines since the lines were destroyed. The Cylons will hack it, sir, but you've got some time." Dorsett reported, screaming over the rushing of air that must be coming from a hull breach down there. In the event the control lines to the engine room were severed, but the engines themselves remained intact, helm control could be operated remotely. It was a dangerous system to use, but there wasn't any choice. The Chief had bought him some time, not much, but some. He'd need all of it for what he had in mind.

"You've done all you can, get out of there!" Andego ordered.

There was a wistful sadness in the voice. "I can't, sir. I'm sealed off from the flight deck by debris." The rushing of air was louder, now, and her voice was barely audible over the torrent. "Good hunting, sir."

"It was an honor, Chief." Andego replied. More impacts scattered across the stricken battlestar and the damage control console lit crimson almost everywhere in the center-section.

"_Ares,_ you have massive structural damage on your top side. Your topside batteries have been destroyed." Summers voice echoed through the speakers.

"Yes, I know. Commander... the fleet is yours." Andego answered. Reaching for the helm, he rolled the ship, ignoring the groaning of metal on metal as she began to break apart. The ventral batteries were still loaded and online, and he'd gain some time with them. The last of the missiles annihilated half of his Viper squadron in an instant, and he cursed the loss of life.

Admiral Mark Andego had never wanted to survive the destruction of the Colonies, the death of his family, but the Gods had saw fit to keep him alive for this sacrifice. Kobol had demanded her price in blood, and it was his fate to pay it.

Raiders flew into the dwindling defense envelope, tracking the fleeing Vipers, but _Ares _suddenly came between the raiders and their prey, buying time for the Vipers to land aboard _Dreadnought. _Dozens of the machine fighters fell, and many of the others scattered. But more approached, from all sides, hundreds of them saturating any possible attempt to defend the ship. _Dreadnought's _flak shells decimated them, but they didn't seem to care.

_Dreadnought _began to move off, leaking air from several impacts of her own, a cloud of raiders hovering over her. Andego steered his crippled battlestar toward the lazily rotating basestar at the edge of the fray. He pushed the engines to flank and waited. More groans echoed through the God of War, and he could actually hear the sounds of his ship dying.

"Just a little more, _Ares._ Just a little more." He pleaded.

…...

"Heavy damage in the prow, sir. We've lost battery seven." Jack reported mechanically. "We've taken multiple impacts forward of frame eight. We have decompression alarms. We've got a fire in the starboard docking bay."

"Get that fire out, Major." Isard ordered. "Our tylium reserves aren't far from that."

"Helm, steer us to port, maximum rotation, best speed." Summers demanded. "Launch all available missiles at the incoming raiders once turn is complete." Their limited missile magazines wouldn't last long, but if there was any time to use them, it was now.

"Aye, Captain." Sandra answered. Raiders were dying by the dozens out there, but there were just too frakking _many._

"All fires out, sir. Docking bay one reports all remaining Vipers are aboard, including _Ares_' ships. But sir, they are literally on top of each other down there, we can't relaunch _anything. _And our gunboats are going to have to jump on their own, we can't land them," Jack reported. "I don't even know how we are going to get pilots out of their cockpits."

"Raptors and shuttles from _Ares _have cleared and are jumping to the rendezvous coordinates. Jump drive is spun up and ready. Civilian ships... 2 minutes, sir." Isard reported.

"Two minutes it is, then." Summers replied. Even with _Ares _between them and the main raider force, two minutes was a very long time to survive in this fight. Another hit registered, and Summers frowned. _Dreadnought _could not survive much more of this relentless pounding. Though _Ares_ had taken the brunt of the attack wave, _Dreadnought_ had suffered heavily in the exchange as well. The police frigate _Charybdis _was suddenly beside them, adding her own limited cannon fire to the defense of the larger vessel.

"_Charybdis_, what are you doing?" Isard demanded.

"I don't know, sir. Seems like I'm helping a bunch of pirates bag some toasters." The captain of the frigate stated. Lieutenant Julius Manning, had been a police officer, in charge of anti-smuggling activities, before the fray. Thus, his popularity among the pirates was rather minimal at best. But, like all survivors, he'd had to learn how to cast aside his reservations and be useful in a fight in a real hurry.

"So say we all." Summers chuckled, despite the gravity of the situation. But the frigate's small-caliber weapons wouldn't help for long, and her armor wouldn't turn any but the lightest of hits. The seconds ticked down as the freighters restarted their jump drives. Sweat dripped from Summers' furrowed brow. Hits echoed through the bones of the old battleship.

"Our gunboats are taking up station next to _Charybdis._ They will jump with us to the rendezvous as soon as the civilians are clear." Isard added.

Summers turned to Sandra. "Helm, course change..."

…...

One's expression was gleeful as he witnessed the impacts of his missile salvo. Despite the Six's moronic attempt to divert some of the missiles to the covering fighters, the damage to _Ares_ had been catastrophic, no matter what happened, _Ares _wasn't escaping. "One down, one to go." He mused.

"_Ares_ is turning about. Coming right at us." Six observed.

"They intend to ram us." A Five pointed out the blatantly obvious. _Those models always were a bit dull,_ One observed.

"Spin us up, get us out of here."

"We won't make it in time." The Five replied. "Intercept in less than a minute."

"Destroy her!" One ordered irrationally. It was then that he noticed the strange wireless signals coming from the ship.

"She's networked!" One stated, working quickly.

Six merely shook her head and smiled. She wasn't quite sure why the Ones always complained about downloading so often. While she could do without the unpleasant experience of actual _death_, the downloading process itself wasn't so bad. In fact, it was at times like that where she felt closer to God, somehow, as if her soul passed through God's hands before being restored to a physical body. Whatever the reason the Ones hated the process so much, Six felt a small amount of pleasure in contributing to his discomfort. It was an evil thought, of course, but for once, the Six formerly known as Jamie Ellison didn't mind it so much.

…...

Raiders pounded _Ares, _tearing her apart with missile after missile. Firewall alerts sounded across the ECM board, the Cylons were hacking his engine control links. He severed the link to the bow thruster, one of the few controls still physically linked to CIC. Seconds seemed to stretch out into eternity.

"Go with the Gods, freed of sin. The Lords of Kobol will take you across the river." It was Summers over the wireless, offering his last rites. _Funny, _Andego thought, _he almost sounds like a priest._ "So say we all."

"So say we all." Andego replied.

Alarms sounded as the Cylons breached the engine control at the last possible moment, taking control of the main engines. His port-side engines switched off as the Cylons attempted to use them to steer the ship. Andego smiled with anticipation, slamming the counter-acting bow thruster fully open. For a moment, the ship fought with itself, and then the Admiral heard the tell-tale signs of the ship splitting apart.

Power fluctuated and went dark as the vessel broke in two under the strain of the engines. The emergency batteries kept some of the DRADIS consoles running, and the emergency lights kicked in, bathing the Admiral in crimson light. He smiled as he realized there was no stopping the God of War now. Just before impact, he saw the icons of _Dreadnought _and the fleet jump to safety. In a way, he was glad he wasn't going with them. He had his own journey to take. Reaching into his pocket, he unfolded a picture of his wife staring at it for a moment, before closing his eyes in acceptance.

The two halves of _Ares _slammed into the baseship's blade, detonating as one as the damaged engines overloaded, the tylium reserves going up like a nuclear bomb. Secondary explosions kicked off as the remaining ammunition stores went up, and finally the entire tangled mess of exploding wreckage impacted the center-axis of the baseship. For a moment, it seemed as if the stricken baseship might just survive anyway. But then it, too, went up in secondary explosions. All was blinding light. All was dark.


	17. Chapter 17

Dreadnought materialized into the void, the small cloud of shuttles, raptors and the fleet vessels surrounding her in the nothingness. Air leaked from her prow, a dozen terrible wounds torn into her hull plating. Even the pirate symbol painted over it was a scorched, blackened thing. Her running lights flickered and died, and the vessel entered into a slow spin, propelled by the leaking air.

Silence hovered over CIC like a smothering blanket. Lights flickered in the damaged command center, many of the monitors were black with inactivity. Emergency lighting kicked in, bathing the room in crimson light. Still, all was quiet, and Summers couldn't blame them. Kobol had been a disaster, _Ares_ was gone, and it had all been his fault.

"Cap'n, the Core has shutdown, we're runnin' on batteries only. No response on the internal comm channels forward of frame eight. Jump drive is offline." Jack reported.

"Get a message out to the raptors. Visual inspection of forward areas of the hull." Summers rattled off mechanically.

"Aye, Cap'n."

"Isard, I need you down in the docking bay. Someone needs to sort out the mess of Vipers that are crammed in there... get your men out of their cockpits."

"Sir." Isard said, not wasting further breath.

"Captain," Frank's voice was unusually sober, "One of the Raptors has the Cylon prisoner aboard. Requesting permission to dock."

"Frak no, Frank. Our docking bays are literally full. Have them dock with _Charybdis._ Tell Manning I want that thing under heavy guard. If it gives any trouble... let it take a spacewalk."

"With pleasure, Captain. Wish I could do it myself." Frank then frowned a moment, pushing his headset against his ear. "Captain... I've got the _Aerelon's Pride_ on. They're saying something about a missile hit, some kind of damage. Doesn't sound like they know their heads from a zero-g vacu-toilet. Guess their captain bought it."

"Can't help 'em 'till we help ourselves, Frank."

Some of the lights flickered back on, and the DRADIS computer rebooted, giving them a clear picture of the nothingness. At least the Cylons hadn't followed them, but it didn't seem necessary anyway. There wasn't a single vessel without some kind of damage floating out there. Raptors filled to the brim with escaped _Ares_ crew were effectively stranded with no food, no water, and no way to dock with the over-crowded bays of _Dreadnought, _now filled with dozens of damaged Vipers. The shuttles from _Ares _were a little better off, but not by much.

_Dreadnought _herself had sustained a terrible amount of damage from the battle, and there was no telling if any of it was structural. That was a terrifying though in itself. _Ares_ had been on borrowed time as it was, but they could not afford to lose _Dreadnought. _It would simply be the end of everyone.

"The core has been restored. We lost a lot of people, Cap'n." Jack's voice was grim. "Everyone who wasn't suited up forward of frame eight is dead. At least a hundred... maybe more."

"Colonel Nash is wanting to talk to you, Captain." Frank said, a worried look on his face.

"Put him on the phone." Summers reached for it. "This is _Dreadnought_, Actual."

"Actual, huh?" Nash replied.

"Yeah, Actual. Got a problem with that?"

"Never did understand why the Admiral placed that kind of trust in you." Nash answered.

"Back at you, Colonel." Summers smiled a bit.

"Frak you. Frak your fucking planet. You're just going to get everyone killed."

"You'd _already_ be dead if it weren't for me showing up and saving _Ares _before, frakwit. But I'm not going to argue with you. Way I see it, you got two choices, eh? Shut the frak up, accept command of _Aerelon's Pride,_ or your raptor can take a flak round straight up the ass. Your call." Summers voice was laced with deadly earnest. He felt the nagging guilt of his failure, and it annoyed him. Ever since the attack, he'd been trying to balance the military and salvager elements, and hadn't been doing good at either. No, he wasn't just annoyed, he was well and truly _pissed off. _It was time to handle this problem in pirate-fashion.

"What? Accept command?" Nash's voice was incredulous.

"Yeah. Look, Colonel. You're an asshole. I don't like you. But I don't know how to lead Vipers into battle, so that's your gig. _Aerelon's Pride_ is damaged. We're going to fix her, and convert her to a carrier for your Vipers, 'cause they sure as hell can't stay here. I'd rather let you have it, but I could always kill you and let Isard do it instead."

"Fine. Frak you, you godsdamned whackjob, I'll do it. For now." Nash's voice sounded with anger, but Summers got the sense that it wasn't directed at him. _No,_ Summers thought, _this is a man dealing with as much guilt as me. _Well, that's what alcohol and sex was supposed to fix. Then Jack shattered that possibility.

"We gotta arrange a service, Cap'n. For the dead. And you're the closest thing to a priest we got."

"Captain's a priest?" Frank looked incredulous. "Never would'a figured that."

"My father was, Frank. He was also an asshole."

"Captain, no offense, but you think _everyone _is an asshole." Frank laughed.

"They usually are. But... not the Admiral. You're right Jack, we gotta do something for 'em."

…...

**24 hours later**

_Dreadnought's _situation room had long ago been converted into a machine shop, and so everyone crowded around the tactical console on CIC for the impromptu meeting. Nash and Isard stood to one side, with Manning twitching nervously behind them. Next to Summers, Sandra was downing a cup of coffee mixed with alcohol and Jack was studying his hastily drawn up plans for the carrier idea. The concept had been something Summers just came up with on the fly, thinking about what to do with all the stacked Vipers in the docking bay, but it was Jack who turned it into a workable concept.

"So let's have this frakked up idea of yours, _Captain._" Nash deliberately ignored his Summers' still-commissioned status.

"Real simple. We've still got craploads of metal salvaged from the _Atlantia _wreckage in our holds, and _Aerelon's Pride_ has a giant frakking hole blown in it's upper cargo hold. Cylons made it easy for us, actually. We cut out the damaged sections, leave the whole bay open to space. Instant mini flight-pod." Summers began.

"Yeah, that could work Cap'n. We'd need to armor her, though. Reinforce her with some of that ribbing we've got, too." Jack offered.

Isard picked up on that idea with enthusiasm. "And weapons. The bridge of the freighter is out front and vulnerable. I suggest we move the control linkages further back, build a CIC out of the auxiliary engine room. We can then use the emptied bridge as a mounting point for point-defense weapons. You'd have a 270 degree firing arc. We position a couple more in the aft section, and you'd have most angles covered."

"It's still not exactly a tough ship. You'd have to hang back in battle, Colonel." Summers pointed out.

"Yeah, I get that. I'm not an idiot." Nash quipped. "Still, there's something to this idea, much as I hate to admit it."

"Wait 'till you hear this one." Summers actually smirked a little in anticipation.

"Oh yeah..." Jack started. "But Sandra should be the one to take credit for it."

"Not like any of you give a frak," Sandra replied dryly. "So as you know.. we can't manufacture missiles on board. Can't make computer guidance systems and all that. But we have boatloads of tylium and scrap metal, and plenty of machinery to shape it all. So... we can build dumb-fire rockets in large numbers."

"What good would dumb-fires be?" Lieutenant Manning, police officer and captain of the _Charybdis,_ asked.

"A lot. First of all, we could rig simple box launchers on _Aerelon's Pride._ Since there's no way the space-frame would take the strain of a capital ship battery, this is a way that we can give it some kind of teeth. Pack a lot of scrap metal into the rocket body, turn it into a flak rocket. Dial it in to go off on a timer, let the shrapnel damage enemy fighters. We could also build ship-to-ship versions. You could hit a basestar with one, maybe a heavy raider too, at short range, with some luck. Wouldn't count on hitting a fighter, though. Hell, mister policeman... we could mount these on your ship, too." Summers pointed out.

"They'd be dangerous to our own fighters. Shrapnel keeps going, in space, you know." Nash pointed out.

"Obviously. Still, there'd be more forward momentum, and we could shape the charge to fire the shrapnel away from the carrier. If used competently, and not fired near the landing bay, it shouldn't be much danger to the vipers." Sandra explained, focusing on the word 'competently.'

"Which goes back to why I want you on that ship, Colonel. Andego told me you used to be a landing officer, LSO or something like that. So you could handle this shit." Summers stated.

"That and you don't want me on your ship." Nash pointed out dryly.

"That too." Summers agreed. "It'll take a few weeks to do the conversions, at a minimum. And we've got some serious damage to _Dreadnought _too, to think about."

"Speaking of which, how did they know we were going to Kobol?" Nash asked darkly.

"Been thinking about that, Cap'n." Jack stated before the pirate captain could respond. "I don't think they did. Think about it... you want to kill all the humans, and the humans want to live on habitable planets, not broken down space ships. So you park fleets at every habitable planet in range. They're rare enough that they could do that, you know."

"Possible." Sandra agreed. "It's also possible that Cylon bitch swallowed a tracking device."

"All too true." Summers agreed. "Jack, you want to give her a proper sendoff? We'll make her spacewalk, jump twice in quick succession in a random direction... then begin the conversions."

"Can we send another toaster with her?" Isard offered, grinning.

"Sounds like an idea to me." Summers agreed amicably, reaching for his flask.

"Drinking on duty, Commander?" Nash stated, pointedly using the man's rank, now.

"Damn right, Colonel. Maybe you should do the same, you look like you could use some." The pirate captain offered the flask to the Colonel, and Nash just stared at him blankly. "Look, Nash. I'm gonna be straight with you. The fleet's gone. The colonies are gone. Hell, Kobol's gone. Out here we make our own rules. Yeah, I get the advantage of military. Obey orders in a crisis and all that... but that's as far as I'm going in that direction. You all call us pirates, and maybe we are. If you ask me, we ought to start thinking like 'em, too."

"I certainly can't arrest any toasters." Manning agreed with a marked tone of cynicism, his Caprican Police uniform looking terribly out of place in the mix-mash of fleet uniforms and disheveled salvagers. He grabbed Summers' flask and drained it. "Tastes like shit."

"Speaking of shit, Captain, we've got a sewage problem..." Frank added to the discussion.

"And I've got a Cylon to flush." Jack said impassively.

Nash had been rather quiet, thinking of his response carefully. "The Admiral trusted you... I'll trust you. But I've got a price. You want to go play pirates, fine. I pick my crew for _Aerelon's Pride._ And we don't do anything, jump anywhere, without my agreement." Nash offered.

"Split command doesn't work, believe me we've tried." Isard replied.

"This isn't split command. I take a ship, you and your pirate captain here keep yours. We decide this thing together." Nash answered.

"The Admiral gave him a commission as a Commander, Colonel." Isard pointed out.

"Yeah? And just how long is he going to keep that rank if the fleet personnel decide he's not a Commander anymore?" Nash replied. Summers' expression turned deadly.

"Not happening on my watch." Isard answered, his voice rising in anger. "We may be all that's left of our frakking species, and I'm frakking sick of arguing about who commands who, do you not get it? If we die, it's extinction, Colonel. These godsdamned pirates stink like yesterday's meat and drink like fish, but they saved people. And with them and their expertise, maybe someday we can rebuild somewhere. So take the offer. Command the carrier, listen to this man, and shut your frakking pie hole before I shove a pulse-grenade down it!"

Silence echoed across CIC for a moment, no one had ever heard Isard talk like this before, and seeing the officer explode with vehement rage did a number on them. Even Summers was stunned speechless.

"Well Godsdamn, Colonel." Nash laughed. "Didn't know you had it in you. All right, you got a deal."

…...

"You." Jack said simply. The Six just watched him from behind the bars with an expression of adoration mixed with abject fear. It was a strange combination, and it unnerved him. Flashes of memory echoed in his mind, sexual encounters in the abandoned holds of _Dreadnought,_ in the days before the Fall.

"Jack..."

"Shuttup! You're not even _my_ Ellison. You're a copy."

"I have her memories. I remember that night when we went into the engine room and..."

"I said shuttup! What? You can't listen? Does not compute, eh?" Jack's voice was filled with fury.

"Do you know what it's like to learn you made a terrible mistake? Aboard the battlestar, I felt sick, I could only think about you. I didn't want to do it..." The Six pleaded, tears streaming down her face. But Jack wasn't buying it. The things had an amazing capacity to elicit emotion, and the Major felt a twisted sort of admiration for whoever had written that software. It was _good_ software, good at its job.

"And I suppose you're gonna tell me you didn't want to send tracking signals to your fleet, eh? Just happened, didn't it?"

"No, Jack. They aren't tracking..."

"We can't take the chance." Jack replied simply.

"Something changed when I saw you again. I don't know. Caprica, she said she loved Baltar, but I didn't understand. She wouldn't share that memory with me."

"Baltar? Gaius Baltar? What the frak are you talking about?"

"The _Galactica_. There are other survivors."

"Where? Tell me where and maybe you don't have to take a walk." Jack seized upon the information.

"I don't know. I haven't been in contact since..." But Jack was in no mood to hear more lies.

"Guards, open the cell." Jack ordered impatiently, and the two salvagers who were unlucky enough to draw this duty quickly opened it, drawing their shotguns and stepping back. There weren't enough colonial-issue weapons to go around, but almost every crewman on the original salvage crew was armed with something.

"You're coming with us. We're gonna let you go, give a message to the supreme Toaster Oven, or whoever the frak give you orders." Jack smiled, as Isard walked in with a toaster. The words 'missed again, better luck next time' were hastily scrawled on the side next to a crude drawing of the skull and crossed wrenches that had come to represent _Dreadnought's _pirate crew_._ "Ah, just in time!"

The journey to the airlock was uneventful, save for the Six trying to test the strength of her bonds. But the salvagers were dangerously savvy in this respect, and the standard cuffs had been replaced with armor-grade steel half an inch thick. It was heavy stuff, but nobody minded the Cylon sweating a little on the way to her spacewalk.

"Oh, Major... I think we forgot the space suit." Isard said, taunting the Six. "Doesn't matter to a tin can though, I'm guessing. Better hold your breath."

The airlock's inner door open and the Six was unceremoniously shoved in by the guards while Isard lazily tossed the toaster over at her head. Her tears continued to flow, but she no longer begged to be saved. Jack could at least respect that in some small measure. A moment of silence passed, and emotions washed over him, tormenting him. They were just so human, he thought. Too human.

He twisted the safety key, and the inner door shut. The Six looked beseechingly up at him, not to beg for her life, though he supposed she'd probably download anyway, but for him to say the words she had longed to hear. He mouthed them, for he could never say them out loud, even if Isard and the guards hadn't been behind him.

"_I loved you."_ His lips moved soundlessly. It was a frakked up world where he could feel like this. He wouldn't hesitate to kill her, true, but she'd still haunt his dreams, his fantasies.

"_I still love you."_ The Six replied in similar fashion. And then his hand, of its own volition, hit the outer door switch, and her body floated out into space, the marked-up toaster following her into the abyss.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18 – Analog Players

Reality had finally intruded in Colonel Isard's awareness. The hazy, half-nightmare of the Fall had given way to the depressing nature of a life stuck permanently in the void. Lights flickered along the poorly-maintained corridors of the ancient battleship. Garbage piled out of abandoned store rooms, too valuable to be cast out into space. Everything and everyone aboard stunk fiercely of grime, sweat and flesh. In a way Isard envied the machines, their cold perfection, the polished chrome of their raiders, the rapacious gleam of their basestars.

Salvage teams had intermingled with the Colonial survivors to such extent that Isard had difficulties telling them apart anymore. The tattered, dirty uniforms of a motley crew were barely discernible against the hap-hazard utility wear of the salvage crew and their civilian proteges. Yet, military decorum remained where it counted most, and the thinning Colonel felt a measure of success in that. Sweaty, stained crewmen stood at attention once more, brushing the metal shavings and grime from their uniforms as he passed. Salutes followed him through the hull of the old warship, a gritty sort of respect. There wasn't much else to hold on to anymore.

Coolant stains mingled with blood stains and burned out circuitry, dangling from the mainlines, where the last battle had left them. There were no more spares to be had among their dwindling stocks of supplies, and so the salvagers had crudely welded plating over the worst coolant line damage, and simply bypassed the burned out circuitry with a myriad of wires.

Yet despite the damage, the dirt and grime, life remained aboard Dreadnought. Mixed teams were everywhere, a hub of drudgery holding the vessel together. Once, he had been accustomed to the cushy battlestars, the simulators and the officer parties. Caprican service had been a desirable one, and his former girth attested to that. His old uniform didn't fit anymore, there was no fat left, nothing extra on his wiry frame. It was the same way for Dreadnought herself.

He forced the hatch open to the Command Deck, stepping into CIC, a hub of relative cleanliness and sophistication in the otherwise dreary vessel. Here, for just a moment, one could feel like nothing had changed. Isard could imagine himself aboard _Zeus _again, orbiting over Caprica, his hunger satisfied, a cold drink awaiting the end of his duty shift.

"Colonel." Summers nodded once, before returning to the center console, looking over the latest reports from the salvage teams. The conversion of _Aerelon's Pride_ had occupied everyone's attention for weeks, now. And fortunately for that project, the Cylons had declined to make an appearance.

Sparks flew from the overhead power lines, and a barrage of curses echoed from the other side of the command deck. Half the lights in CIC immediately went dark.

"Damnit Frank! You were supposed to throw the breaker you ignorant frakwit." One of the Colonial officers screamed from the other end of CIC.

"I did! Must be broken." Frank pleaded, dropping his wrench.

"Frak it." Summers said. "I don't care if it's dark in here anyway. We have more important concerns."

"Looks like the conversion is almost done." Isard replied, looking over the reports. The project had been remarkably successful, although Sandra's dumb-fire rockets had proven harder to machine out of scrap than had been previously thought. The tooling aboard Dreadnought had been tailored to taking ships apart, not large-scale manufacturing. But it was certainly better than nothing. Only a Mercury-class battlestar possessed any real manufacturing capacity, even _Ares_ couldn't have matched _Dreadnought_'s output.

Summers wiped the sweat from his brow. The heating in CIC was obviously malfunctioning too. "Yeah. Told you we could do it. Just remains to be seen if that idiot Nash can run a viper carrier."

"FTL reports a green board, sir." It was Kyle, an Lieutenant from the old _Zeus_ crew. "Looks like we're back in business."

"Some good news, at least." The Captain mused.

Com traffic piped up over the DRADIS display, Isard restrained his frustration. "Stalker this is Aerelon's Pride, landing check is green. Call the ball."

"This had better work." Sandra mused, taking a long pull from her flask.

"Well the landing strip and mag locks were the easy part. I'm more worried about full on combat landings. That deck is only about two-thirds as long as a proper flight pod, and it's half as wide." Isard pointed out. "Stalker will probably do fine, it's the other pilots I'm worried about."

"Didn't the fleet used to use escort carriers?" Summers asked.

"Yeah, in the original war. Not so different from what we're doing here, actually. They converted civvie designs and added a flight deck, elevators and some limited armaments in a crash program. The Osiris-class were essentially merchant hull conversions. They were decommissioned right after the war, though, the ones that survived anyway. None of us have even landed on them in the sims." The Colonel explained. And it was true enough, although there might be one or two of the older crew members with some experience in it. They wouldn't be part of the flight crew, though.

"And without launch tubes, it'll take longer to get 'em in the air, too." Sandra added. "But it's better than flying them out of our docking bays, that's for sure."

It had taken an entire day just to get the cluttered mess of ships out of the bays and shuttled over. Isard didn't even know how some of the pilots had managed to land their birds at all in that mess. At least that seemed to indicate landing aboard _Aerelon's Pride_ was probably workable, in the long run.

"Ohhhh yeah!" Stalker's voice came over the com. "Real smooth."

"Cut the chatter, Stalker." Nash's voice replied over the same channel. "Landing test was successful, Dreadnought."

Jack's voice came through the comm, excitement creeping into his manner for the first time since Ellison had been shot. "Frak yes! Told'ya we'd get it done Cap'n." The Major stated proudly over the wireless.

"Great work, Jack. Now we just need a rechristening. An extra jug of Sandra's swill to the best idea for a name." The salvage captain offered. "That's to _anyone._"

"That's one problem solved. But Stalker could land on anything." Isard began. "We'll have to get the other pilots some practice doing it."

Summers tapped his fingers on the center console. "Yeah, but be careful with our fuel."

"We have plenty." Sandra protested. "It's about the only thing we have extra of, actually. We're swimming in it, there's enough in the tanks for a decade or more, at the rate we're using it."

"Yeah." Summers stood up, addressing the bridge crew. "Look people, Kobol was a bust. And you can bet there will probably be more toasters on any inhabitable rock we find for awhile."

"So we coast. Chill out a bit in the void, right Cap'n?" Frank piped up, closing the circuit breaker door he had been working on. Isard observed that nothing shorted out this time around.

"We may be coasting a long time. And even supposing we find tylium ore on some hunk of rock, what are we going to mine and refine it with? So conserve the fuel, it's irreplaceable. Do as much as you can with your sims. For now, we'll jump as soon as the tests are complete, and drift while we figure out where to go."

"It's not like we know where to go anyway." Sandra mused darkly. Certainly no one would ever accuse her of being a cheerful sort of woman. Isard tried to remember if he had _ever_ seen her smile.

The conversation droned in his mind, introspection taking over. Something was nagging at Isard's awareness. It was like the remnants of forgotten dream, the knowledge that he had forgotten something that was very important to him.

"The cycle of time..." He mused to no one in particular.

"What was that?" Summers asked, his interest piqued.

"The scrolls. They tell us this happens again and again. Might as well be a mantra."

"Yeah. My father used to say there was evidence that the scrolls were based on something even older. Underlying currents, he liked to call them. I thought he was insane." The old pirate said, his eyes distant.

"I can agree with that." Sandra added. "In tracing the route to Kobol, I found evidence of that."

"Jack's report from the Cylon interrogation mentioned _Galactica._" The Colonel said.

"Cylon lies." Sandra replied. "What are the odds?"

"What are the odds of any of this happening? We ran into two groups of survivors on what were essentially random jumps. There's another player at work here, I'm sure of it." The pirate captain answered. "But it doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. Even if there are other survivors out there, we have no means of finding them."

"Yes we do." Isard smiled. "The scans from Kobol indicated a recent crash site on the surface. We _were_ following someone, we just didn't know it."

"So? We don't know where they went, or if they still survive." The drunken engineer pulled out her flask and took another long pull, grimacing slightly. "Frakking algae-based swill."

"But they are looking at the same scrolls we are, if they made it to Kobol. Commander, you're the closest thing we have to a priest. Where else could the scrolls lead them?"

"Earth. The home of the thirteenth tribe." The pirate scratched his chin thoughtfully. "No way of knowing where it could be, though. The descriptions in the scrolls are... strange. They don't even make sense. If Earth does exist it must be very far away."

"Besides, I bet you every ounce of liquor I have left that the Cylons are thinking the same frakking thing." Sandra belched. "Park a toaster party at every habitable planet from here to whatever cesspit the thirteenth tribe flew off to."

"There's something to that, though." The Colonel eyed the pirate captain closely. He was starting to remember now, the old stories from his childhood, the decrepit, haze-covered temples outside Caprica city. "The scrolls themselves talk about several exoduses from Kobol... they had to be following someone, right? Think about it. So the toaster park fleets from the colonies, in the general direction of this other planet. Or maybe just in range of another fleet, supposing it exists. There's our signposts. We don't have to study some mystical knowledge."

"The toasters won't expect us to follow _them."_ Summers smiled grimly. "So we do raptor scout jumps, keep 'em powered down and stealthy. You could have been a fair pirate, Isard."

"My sense of smell is too good." The Colonel laughed.

"That's what I said." Sandra rolled her eyes dramatically. "But you know, the crew may stink, and the ship might smell like a toilet, but this old flying beer keg outlasted all the shiny new ships out there, didn't she?"

"You'd think we would have learned our lesson the first time." Isard said wistfully. A wash of guilt flooded his awareness, because even he, a Colonial officer, had failed to learn from history. The worst part about it was that in some ways, he still didn't understand it. Technology was such a blessing to the quality of life, it was hard to separate the threat from the pleasure. He imagined it had been similar for the original builders of the Cylons.

Summers smile fell away, as if he knew the inner turmoil in Isard's mind. The hard, stony expression of the old pirate returned. "Flew in a pirate crew for awhile. Their leader was one of those computer-haters, ran his ship on minimal automation, didn't even use a pocket calculator. He once told me... We are analog players in a digital world." He turned away toward his cabin. "Never made sense to me until all this happened. You have the conn, Colonel."

"Cap'n is a strange one." Frank mused as the deck lights flickered and came back on. "Says the weirdest things sometimes."

"Scary thing is," Sandra began. "He usually makes more sense that way."

**ooooooooooooooooooooo**

Broken spires stretched into the skies of Caprica, like the Hand of God reaching for the void. Caprica-Six remembered it as it had been, once, the teeming center of mankind. Now, the wind blew through empty streets, the refuse of a civilization caught within its grasp.

Here and there, centurions cleaned away the wreckage, rebuilding the place as a great Cylon city, parked upon the ruins of the progenitors. Half a century before, Cylons had built many of these structures as slaves of man. Now they served no master. Yet it all rung hollow in her mind.

Her fingers traced along the worn stone of the oldest temple on Caprica, carved by hand by refugees of Kobol millenia before. She couldn't explain why she had come here, to the ancient landing site on the outskirts of the city. The cycle of time wore on her mind, and she wondered what would become of her people. Would the breeding program be successful? Would they, thusly, become their parents? What separated her from the humans?

"Interesting, isn't it?" The image of Gaius Baltar appeared in her vision, smoke wafting from his cigar. "So many questions today."

"Gaius..." She whispered, her voice cautiously low.

"Starting to think you're human now, eh? Come now, I expected more from you." Baltar tapped his ashes on the ground distractedly.

"What happened before? Why did the humans come here?"

"That _**is**_ the question, isn't it?" He turned toward the interior of the temple, his gaze resting upon an ancient carving that seemed remarkably similar to older centurion models. "How did they just happen upon a dozen habitable worlds in a tight-knit star cluster?"

"God?" Caprica-Six offered.

"That's one theory, anyway. But if God loved the humans enough to save them, why would that same divinity doom them to extinction now?"

"Where did they go, those others?" Caprica-Six wondered, pointing to the vaguely centurion-shaped carvings.

"Now, it wouldn't be fun if I gave you all the answers, would it?" Baltar took a long pull from the stogie and gazed into her eyes, that haughty look of smug superiority etched onto his features. "Love is a strange emotion, isn't it? Very analog."

"Love?"

"Yes. Love. Imagine that, emotional machines." Baltar's expression turned serious. "Now, think of other emotions. Anger, jealousy, rage. One implies the other, does it not?"

"We didn't do this out of anger." Caprica-Six protested. "We did it out of..."

"Out of Love?" Baltar smiled again. "I guess I don't understand you after all. Silly me." The apparition vanished, a haze of smoke wafting lazily into the afternoon air. Directly in front her was the statue of Apollo, pointing to the stars, upon its base was carved the words every human child had once been taught. _All of this has happened before, All of this will happen again._

Far away, she knew, the war continued. The survivors had been whittled down, beaten down but they still remained. And if, somehow, they escaped... then it would happen again. Someday, the humans would return.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19 - Dreams of Kobol

Sleep had never come easily for Sandra, even less so since the Fall. Life aboard ship had always caused a certain unnatural sleep rhythm, but there had been no reset, no shore leave. And so the days blurred together, into one long state of semi-catatonia. The physicist wandered the flickering corridors of the old battlewagon, half-drunk, feeling as if the stars had somehow aligned themselves against her.

"Nice uniform." A familiar and unwelcome voice, laden with sarcasm, came from behind her. She turned slowly, accentuating her disdain. She had lost a lot of weight since the fall, and her clothing was ill-fitting now, exposing more than she really wanted it to.

"Elena. What do you want?" She replied, her voice thick with disdain. The entire point to wandering the passageways of the old battleship was to relax and get away from everyone. Being friendly and social had never been one of her strong suits, and now the most arrogant pilot of the lot had decided to interrupt her.

"Maybe I want a piece of that." The pilot mused, her eyes traveling up and down the physicist's body.

"Didn't know you swung that way." Sandra replied acidly.

"I don't discriminate." The pilot shrugged.

Sandra brought her flask to her lips, letting the comforting burn make up for the discomforting company. For a moment she hesitated, caught between loathing and grudging respect, before finally extending the flask to the pilot. "Want a pull?"

Elena reached for the offered flask, her eyes never leaving Sandra's. There was a certain insanity in that gaze. Sandra knew it for what it was. Space was a vast, lonely place. Some who stared into that abyss, become unhinged, ungrounded somehow. Combine that trait with the natural arrogance of an expert viper jock, and Elena just became all that more unbearable.

"Not bad. You're getting better at making this shit. Merely tastes like seaweed instead of distilled ass." The pilot hefted her duffel bag from the deck. "Send some over to Nash. Knock him out so I don't have to deal with him."

"Yeah." Sandra said dryly. "Real winner, that guy. So you're leaving for the carrier?"

"Orders are orders, I guess. Even from a frakking pirate." Elena seemed to have acclimated herself to working under the Captain, but Sandra had her doubts. She believed it was simply a matter of Elena deciding Summers and Isard were preferable to Colonel Nash, for the time being. There would be trouble later, when she thought better of it. "Someone's got to train the frakking wannabe nuggets how to land on that tin can anyway."

"Have fun." Sandra grabbed her flask back and turned back down the corridor. She knew the slap on her departing ass was coming a moment before it hit. It was a playful smack, the sort she had received more than once since joining the salvage crew. But it hadn't happened since she'd moved into the Captain's quarters. Even the randy salvage folk knew better than to try that.

"Might want a piece of that." Elena muttered as the physicist turned the corner, trying to ignore the delusional pilot.

**ooooooooooooooo**

The old captain glanced about the mess hall with mild disdain. What passed for the mess hall on _Dreadnought_ was just a converted cargo bay, with a haphazard, grated wall welded into place. It was at least well lit and well maintained, unlike many other parts of the ship. On the other side of that grating lay a mess of viper parts, the disorganized pile that had made its way from _Ares_ in the days before the battlestar had been destroyed. The salvage crews hadn't even managed to sort through half of it yet. And so Thomas Summers moved his fork around his bowl of algae mush, trying to ignore the stench of oil, the loud noises of clanking parts and muttered curses that echoed across the deck.

He glanced at Jack Stanton, who looked similarly thrilled with the algae diet.

"Tastes like shit."

"That's an insult to shit, Cap'n." Jack answered. "But the last stores of the good stuff are gone. At least we still have some salt."

"Yeah, what do we do when that's gone?" The Captain took a bite. He was hungry, and unpalatable or not, it was food. Barely.

"Sandra said something about the salt byproducts from the water recycling process." Isard answered.

"That's piss salt, Colonel." Summers replied. "Literally. I'm not eating that."

"Well, this stuff _does_ taste like shit already." Jack mused.

"So are we really going to do it?" Isard asked, changing the subject. "Follow the Cylons, I mean. Not use the piss salt."

"It's dangerous as all hell." Summers said darkly, a grimace worming its way onto his features.

"We have to decide... do we risk it, try to find other survivors? Pretty risky." Isard trailed off, rubbing his chin in deep thought.

"I don't know. I mean, if there is another battlestar out there, it'd be nice to combine forces. But we just don't know anything about the Cylons. We don't know where they come from, why they attacked the colonies out of nowhere. All we know is they want to kill us." The old pirate rubbed his forehead, trying to banish the perpetual headache. "For all we know, more of those humanoid... things could still be lurking around the fleet stirring up trouble."

"Blind luck, Cap'n." Jack finished his bowl, taking a long swig of Sandra's Swill. "We can't drift forever. A long time, yeah, but not forever. We gotta go somewhere."

"We need to do recon anyway. If we find out where the Cylons are going, we can at least make an intelligent decision then. Follow or go in the opposite direction." Isard added, taking a sip of water. The Colonel still kept a proper image most of the time.

"There's something to that. But we can't track jump coordinates, not really." The Captain forced down another helping.

"Well, the fleet developed a methodology on how to track movements. We still can't track actual jump coordinates, but with a handful of raptors placed at strategic points in space, we can get an idea of where they are heading, at least the direction." Isard explained. "We just park a few raptors in star systems near the last place we ran into them. Record the jump-in and jump-out times and head back home. We can compare the data and get a directional fix."

"How do we know the Cylons even navigate the way we do?" Jack asked. Navigating by star systems and other recognizable landmarks was the standard practice, but who knew how the machines operated? At least in the middle of the void they were currently floating in, Summers knew, there was very little chance of them encountering Cylons by accident.

Summers shrugged his shoulders slightly. "We don't. But it doesn't matter, we know they _are_ scoping out potentially habitable systems. So there are our strategic targets. And if somehow we find a toaster-free habitable rock, well then our problems are solved anyway." His fork clanked loudly on his plate. "But this has got to be real quiet-like. If the Cylons track _us_ instead of us tracking them, we're in the shit. I don't think we can stand up to even one basestar anymore. Not without _Ares."_

Jack smiled deviously. "Well, Cap'n, it shouldn't be a problem. With how banged up our ships are, they'll look like space junk anyway."

Summers nodded. "Yeah. Keep the heaters real cold and thermal output low. Drift with DRADIS on passive mode only. Still, we're going to need our best on this thing."

"You know who that means." Isard said knowingly.

"Yeah. I thought we were finally rid of her." Summers rubbed his temples. A pile of parts crashed in the background, followed by a stream of curses. His headache wasn't going anywhere, he knew.

**oooooooooooooooo**

Elena cursed as she powered up her Raptor's engines. While she didn't share the disdain her fellow Viper jocks held for "bus driver" duty, she certainly did have an appreciation of just how risky this mission really was. Lieutenant Andrew Dorn, more commonly known as Trainwreck, was acting as her ECO, and he certainly _did_ despise Raptor duty, even if he seemed more enthusiastic about the actual mission. But Trainwreck had been an ECO before eventually making it into the flight academy, and now there were a lot fewer ECOs than pilots. He didn't take what was, essentially, a demotion very well.

"Frakking bus duty..." Dorn muttered. "Just 'cause they call me Trainwreck doesn't mean I want to fly off in one."

"Just how the frak did you get _that _callsign anyway, Lieutenant." Elena grumbled as she cleared the flight deck of the jury-rigger carrier.

"You really want to know?" Dorn asked.

"I asked, didn't I?" Elena answered.

"Had a bit of an accident I had in flight training. One of the deckhands drove a tender into my Viper. It wasn't my fault, but the name stuck. Especially since random accidents seemed to follow me around everywhere." Dorn answered while he worked his console. The comm panel clicked on.

"Keep that bad luck to yourself. This mission is probably going to be a shitstorm even without that." Elena answered.

"Raptor flight three-niner, you are cleared for jump."

"Roger, _Revenge_." She answered. At least someone had finally come up with a better name for the freighter, not that the Tin Can, as it was more commonly known, was going to be delivering much vengeance if the Cylons bothered to show up. It was one step up from a flying bus itself.

"Electronic countermeasures are a go. Passive DRADIS scan only, thermals are minimal. Jump drive is spun up." Dorn reported mechanically.

Elena took a moment to double check her figures, wondering just how bad of a clusterfrak this was going to end up becoming. Then again, she didn't have much else to do. At least her boredom would be cured. She wasn't sure what to think of the insane idea to track the Cylon fleet. It was either exceptionally brilliant or incredibly stupid. Either way it was risky. And the old pirate Captain had personally selected her for the most dangerous portion of the mission. The other Raptors would be scouting systems which _might_ have a Cylon presence. She would be scouting one that almost certainly did.

Elena put her hands together in a short prayer of warding. She didn't need any more bad luck. "Seriously. No trainwrecks, okay Lieutenant?" She replied. "Jump."

_Space reformed around her, like cosmic putty stretched too thin. Consciousness flickered in her mind for the briefest of moments, but it felt like an eternity, caught in the void. Caprica loomed before her, fresh and new as a single, battered starship took up orbit around it. The vessel was ancient beyond belief, pockmarked from its long journey, carbon scoring from a myriad of battles covering its gashed armor plating. Its running lights flickered, and its engines failed._

_Everyone knew that ship, every school child on the 12 colonies could recognize it by shape alone. She was the great Star Galleon that had led the survivors of Kobol home, to a dozen new worlds. Athena had thrown herself from the rock of Kobol as it had taken off for the last time, cast into the depths, a final sacrifice necessary to appease the Gods._

"_All of this has happened before..." A male voice droned out from nowhere. It was familiar, somehow, but that didn't comfort her. If anything, it was unsettling, even frightening._

_The dying Galleon launched a myriad of shuttles and small craft, which dispersed across the 12 worlds, even as its orbit began to degrade. She watched, helplessly as it burnt up in the atmosphere of Caprica, its scattered remains falling into the Great Sea._

"_All of this will happen again..." She repeated the mantra._

Kobol loomed ahead of her as she snapped out of her trance. She shook her head a moment, trying to clear the strange and scattered thoughts. Jumping, it had been explained in Basic Flight, could be an unsettling experience for some. The mind often had difficulty processing the exact sensation. Sandra probably could have explained the physics of it all, and given everyone else a headache in the telling, but it was one step up from outright magic to most Colonials.

"Drive at minimal power. Give me a passive DRADIS scan." Elena ordered.

"Sir." Dorn acknowledged. "No contacts. Just debris from _Ares _and the basestar."

"That's odd." She replied. This place had been crawling with Cylons only a few weeks before. It seemed unlikely they would completely abandon it. "Any radio chatter?"

"Nothing. Quiet as a mouse." Came Dorn's reply. The worry was apparent in his voice, too.

"Settling into high orbit. Maybe there's something on the other side." She tapped the throttle just barely. The jump coordinates and relative velocity had been plotted ahead of time from _Revenge, _to use minimal engine power. The more she used the sublight engines, the more she risked detection.

Fortunately, if there was anything lurking around Kobol, her engine tap didn't seem to alert it. All of her Raptor's detection systems remained as they were. Minutes passed, as the ancient surface of Kobol turned beneath her. The minutes turned into hours, and still nothing.

"Captain said to give it a full day if necessary." Dorn broke the silence.

"Somehow, I don't think the Cylons are going to make this easy for us." Elena muttered.

"Maybe they just left some kind of passive device behind. Would be hard to detect." Dorn offered. "Still nothing. Not even a thermal reading."

"All right... we're going to do something a little crazy. Got a problem with that, Trainwreck?" The pilot used his callsign deliberately.

"Nope. No problems." Dorn smiled. "What's the plan?"

"There's still a large amount of wreckage from the _Ares_ floating around. Are there any emissions from it at all?"

"A bit. The thermals show some active power sources. Even when you destroy a battlestar, there are batteries, redundant subsystems and individual components that still register for a bit... not to mention residual thermal energy." Confusion overcame the officer's features. "Why?"

"Could it hide us if we went active?"

"Maybe. If we did a short active burst, it might just look like a piece of the battlestar going up. If the Cylons have been lurking around here since the battle, they've probably seen that more than once." Dorn turned to face her. "Risky, though, real risky."

"Good enough for me. Keep the jump drives spun up, we may have to bail in a hurry." Elena replied, tapping the sublight throttle again. It actually took several hours to reach the orbiting wreckage, running the sublights at minimal power. But as crazy as the other pilots often called her behind her back, Elena had no desire to die today.

"Coming up on the wreckage. The most residual energy appears to be coming from a large piece of the aft engine compartment, which seems to be relatively intact. There are probably some components with power in there." Dorn punched the coordinates into the nav computer.

"I see it. Let's just coast in..." She matched the speed and direction of the wreckage. From a distance, the Raptor would look like a piece of it. "Go active. Just a short burst."

"Going active... three second active DRADIS scan." Dorn worked the console.

For a moment a contact registered on Elena's console. "Got something here."

"I see it. Very small, but it's too far from the battle wreckage to be anything of ours. The direction is all wrong too, it's in a perfect low orbit." Dorn's expression grew more grave. "Now that the active sweep caught it, I think I can hold a passive fix. My bet is some kind of recon satellite."

"Would we have seen it before?" She asked, suddenly curious. "I mean when we did the system recon before the battle."

"Probably not, actually. It's very small, and has very low power emissions. I dialed the sensitivity way down just to get the active fix. Actually, I was Godsdamned lucky to see it at all." He shrugged his shoulders. "No idea what it is, sir."

"Could it be something from those other survivors Major Stanton keeps blabbing about?" She asked.

"Seems pretty farfetched. My bet is a Cylon device." Dorn stared at the monitor as Elena reoriented the Raptor. "Sure you want to get near that thing?"

"Well we want to know where the Cylons went, right? But not us, personally. We'll use a comm drone." Elena smirked.

"Yes, sir." Dorn didn't seem to like the idea, but he tapped the communications console anyway. "All yours."

The pilot hesitated a moment. Once she launched this thing, she knew she would probably be stirring up a hornet's nest. She tapped the launch key gingerly, as if expecting an immediate response.

The comm drone flared out from the _Ares_ wreckage, on a direct course for the mysterious device. Elena had locked it on perfectly, it wouldn't just pass near the device, it would physically collide with it. There could be no doubt that it would provoke some kind of reaction.

The minutes ticked by, the distance was considerable. For her part, Elena tapped the sublight throttle again, moving away from the wreckage she had been hiding behind. If the Cylons could trace the course of the comm drone, it would lead them back here. She had no intention of being there if and when the Cylons showed up.

"Three minutes." Dorn reported. A few moments later there was a brief comm burst. "It's squawking something. Recording the broadcast."

"Be careful with that. We don't want to pick up a Cylon virus." She warned. That had been a common tactic in the original Cylon War, something all Colonials should have been paying attention to. Even non-networked computers could be individually infected, and communications had been a natural weakness. There were horror stories from that conflict about communications systems which had been unknowingly infected, and broadcast their locations to nearby Cylons. Before the Fall, she might have dismissed those tales as exaggeration. Now, excessive paranoia where computers were concerned seemed to be the only intelligent move.

"I'm using the backup system. I'll wipe it before we jump." Dorn smiled, holding a rather large magnet. That, too, was standard issue now. "Seems odd though. Here, listen."

The broadcast _was_ strange. It didn't sound like a Cylon message, not unless the Cylons talked to each other in a dead language. She managed to make out a word here and there.

"Sounds like Old Caprican." She said in wonder. Old Caprican had become a liturgical language in the Athenian Temples over two thousand years before. It had remained a language of learning for some time thereafter, but nobody spoke it outside of the priesthood anymore. Still, historians had referred to it as the closest well-documented relative to Kobolian, the common ancestor of all the languages of the twelve colonies.

"Could be a trick." Dorn pointed out. "We should still wipe it."

"Yeah, but write it down first, as best you can. Maybe someone in the fleet can make sense of it."

The transmission cut out suddenly as the comm drone collided with the mysterious satellite. Elena suddenly regretted that, now. Was it possible she had just destroyed an ancient Kobolian artifact?

"Don't worry, I'm looping it back." Dorn reported, trying to make sense of the strange words. At this point, Elena saw, he was just writing down the sounds as best he could.

Something beeped for a moment on DRADIS, but vanished again. If the passive scanners had picked it up without a directional fix, it was probably big. Unintelligible radio chatter was registering on the primary comm panel. "Dorn... spin up the drives and wipe the backup comms."

"But I've almost got it! A few more seconds." He tried to play back another section of the message.

"There's no time. Something's out there." The DRADIS console beeped again. This time, whatever the contact was, it was heading toward the location of the old satellite.

"But..."

"NOW, godsdamnit." Elena ordered. She caught a glint of something above the planet. More contacts appeared briefly on the DRADIS console.

"Yes, sir. Spinning up. We have a green board."

"Wipe it." She ordered. Trainwreck looked like he was committing blasphemy. Which, Elena realized suddenly, he might actually be doing. But the Gods would have to understand.

"Backup communications system has been wiped." He said, disappointed. "I got some of it written down, at least."

"What is that contact?" She asked. It at least behooved her to complete the original mission, and identify the basestar, assuming that was what it was. There were slight differences in most of the basestars, mainly the product of battle-damage, it seemed. It would be enough to identify it if they got more data from it.

"Passive DRADIS isn't getting a clean fix on it. They've got some kind of EM generator mucking things up. But... visual enhancement..." He tapped the controls a bit. Raptors configured for recon sported a great deal of high-resolution camera equipment for just such an eventuality. Often times, a good visual fix was better than low-power passive DRADIS.

"Definitely a Cylon Basestar!" Dorn yelled. "I don't think it's seen us yet, they are closing on the satellite though. They'll find that comm drone soon enough. I've got some pretty pictures of it."

"All right, we're out of here. Mission accomplished." She punched the jump drive. For a moment, she dreaded that the strange vision would return, but this time the Gods decided to be merciful.


	20. Chapter 20

Indecision plagued the Captain, though he would never admit as much to his crew. He had been on duty for most of the day, waiting as the recon teams returned to the ancient battleship. Waiting, however, was something he had been accustomed to. Much of his career as a salvager had been spent doing exactly that, overseeing the recovery of wrecks and spending weeks tracking down old battle sites. More than once, shipping accidents had resulted in wrecked ships that his team could render down to scrap metal, and that was a long, tedious sort of duty.

Summers knew he had never been meant for this sort of responsibility. As the owner of a salvage company, he knew his trade. As the leader of a band of filthy survivors from a Cylon apocalypse, he was completely out of his element. But that couldn't be admitted, or shown. His crew depended on him, and the fleet depended on his crew. Without them, survival was a hopeless task. Even now, teams of salvage techs were scouring the hulls, repairing battle damage and fitting new point-defense cannons, themselves built of scrap metal worked by the machine shop crew aboard ship.

"Cap'n." Frank said. The heavyset, round little man had been losing a lot of weight, Summers knew. But they all had. Still, Frank was a man who, as long as some sort of food was available, would probably never be thin. "The shop was telling me just now... they got some of those death nuts ready."

Death nut was just a fringe nickname for homemade grenades. They had been common enough on any less-than-reputable vessel that plied their trade on the fringes of Colonial space.

"How many do they think they can produce?" He asked, stroking his chin. The Colonials had brought some small arms from _Ares_ before the battlestar had been destroyed, but not much in the way of explosives. There was still a lurking suspicion that a Cylon agent might still be among them.

"Jack's telling me say, ten a day, until we run out of spare piping anyway. Lot slower after that. Guess it's just some leftover they're using from them rockets." Frank chewed on a hardtack cracker, one of the few remaining foods in the storerooms, aside from the terribly disgusting algae mash. The reality of the Fall weighed upon him, now that the last remaining creature comforts had vanished. His traditional stogie was lacking, and the taste of algae was in everything, even the booze.

"Get me Graystone on that farm ship." Summers turned to Kyle a communications officer and _Zeus_ survivor. Most of the Colonial crewmen aboard _Dreadnought_ were _Zeus_ men, and for that Summers was grateful. The Admiral had been a decent man, but most of the _Ares_ crew felt more loyalty to Nash instead of him, and that was understandable. That didn't make Nash any less of a thorn in his side, though. The _Zeus_ survivors, of course, were much more reasonable. Even the most intractable of them had come around by now, including Elena herself. Some of them had even taken to drinking with the salvagers on a regular basis. They took pride, he knew, in crewing the most powerful ship in their little fleet. The _Ares_ crew aboard the Tin Can, on the other hand, felt no such pride.

"Yeah? What do you want Summers?" Graystone's irritated voice came over the speakers. Paul Graystone had become the unofficial leader of all the civilians, most of whom crewed the farm freighter. But a scattering of civilian crewers could be found aboard _Dreadnought,_ too, learning to weld and machine parts. Graystone viewed the pirates and the Fleet crewers with barely restrained hostility, as if any day now someone might decide to line up all the civilians against a bulkhead and pull the trigger. It probably didn't help, Summers knew, that they had been essentially reduced to farmers and "fertilizer technicians," which didn't even merit thinking about.

"How's that hydroponic bay coming?" Summers asked. The algae vats had been a brainchild of the Admiral in the days before the battle over Kobol. And they were effective at providing for the fleet's basic needs, though Summers didn't want to think about where the "nutrients" needed to grow the algae was coming from. The hydroponics bay, on the other hand, could produce small amounts of normal food with their seed stock, enough to at least season the algae with something less disgusting once in awhile.

"Well if your workers weren't drunk all the time..." Graystone complained. "But anyway, most of it's done. We've got some stuff growing already, but it'll be a month or two before we start getting anything out of it. Even then, it'll just be spices. The bigger plants... bit longer than that. Now, if you'll excuse me?" The civilian leader cut the connection and Summers frowned.

Even if they managed to find a habitable planet, someday, nobody would be eating any real meat any time soon. They had seed stock for plenty of plants in the freighter shipments, and for that Summers thanked the Gods. It was a stroke of luck that one of the freighters had been carrying almost nothing but agricultural implements. But they had no livestock, and the Captain certainly could have used a good steak or even just a slab of jerky.

"Raptor three-niner is incoming, sir." Kyle reported. Well, Summers thought to himself, at least the waiting was over. The entire mapping of the Cylon fleet depended on Stalker's recon mission as a sort of base.

"Get Isard out of bed. And get Jack up here." Summers ordered. He unbuttoned his uniform jacket, the only piece of the uniform the Admiral had given him that he actual wore with any regularity, and reached for the flask contained within. He took a short pull, just enough to take the edge off and waited for the other senior officers to show up.

Jack, as always, was the first. How that old man managed to move so fast, Summers would never know. The Captain stared in envy at the cigar Jack was chomping on.

"What's going on, Cap'n?" The salvager asked, holding his cigar out for a moment, letting the smoke waft about CIC. For a moment, Summers felt bad. Jack had been his First Mate for many years, a position that had now been more or less assumed by Isard. But Jack remained the real, day-to-day authority behind the repair and manufacturing efforts. At least he commanded more people, now, and while Isard could be trusted to handle combat and military affairs, Jack was by far the best at handling the repair and manufacturing crews. Summers had been making it a point to keep him involved in big decisions.

"Last Raptor is in. Stalker, of course." Summers waved his hand dismissively. It was natural for the arrogant pilot to have the last word.

"Sir." Colonel Isard stepped on to the deck, looking as if someone had simply dragged him out of bed. "Reporting as ordered." He said with stiff military precision. The Colonel clung to his military routines with a staunchness even his fellow officers couldn't manage. Everyone had their crutches to lean on during the shit, Summers knew.

"Relax, Colonel. Last Raptor is back, is all. Got some work to do." Summers explained, still staring at the alluring cigar smoke.

"Want a pull, Cap'n?" Jack offered the stogie.

"Gods yes. Killed my last one few days back." Summers took the offered cigar, tasting the familiar flavor. It had been too long. He reluctantly handed it back to the salvager. "How many you got left?"

"Last one. Figured finishing work on _Revenge_ was worth it." Jack replied wistfully. "Bit by bit, Cap'n, it all goes away. Frakking toasters."

"Sir, Stalker's skids are down." Kyle reported.

"Have her report to the bridge." Summers ordered simply. "Now using your methods, Colonel... seems maybe we have a good idea where they are headed now. 'Course, Stalker's report ought to confirm it." Most of their precious printing paper was gone, though they would be able to recycle their stashes soon enough. So the old pirate pulled up the display on a CIC monitor.

"Whatta we got, Cap'n?" Jack asked, carefully nursing the cigar.

"Look at the jump times on these things. Hell, some of the Raptors, they had to do multiple jumps just to reach their target systems." The Captain pointed to the readouts on the chart. Confirmed sitings of baseships jumping in and out of systems _did_ provide a good idea of general course.

"Gods, their jump systems must be good." Isard whistled. "No battlestar could do that in single jumps."

The Captain's face fell. "Same shit I was figuring. Let's just hope they can't track our jumps, or we're in trouble."

"You'd think they'd already be here if that were true." Jack pointed out, tapping his ashes into his pocket. "We should prolly jump out of here if it's all the same to you, though."

The Colonel nodded his head. "Agreed. Theoretically it's impossible to track jumps, and I don't really think the Cylons can do it. But might as well not take any risks."

"Do it." Summers agreed simply, nodding to Isard. "Jump the ship, Colonel."

"Landing deck secure?" Isard asked.

"Yes, sir." Kyle reported.

"Jump drive is good." Frank added walking over to that station. "Everything green. Sandra's coordinates are in."

Isard nodded to the rotund salvager. "Send transmission to the fleet: are jumping to prearranged coordinates. Two minute spinup, execute on my command."

As always, Summers felt his stomach churn with the proposition of jumping. Sandra had tried explaining it to him once, what jumping actually was, but it had just made his perpetual headache worse. Still, the physicist claimed there was no sensation, that you were simply in one place one moment, and a different place the next. Yet, he knew she was wrong. There _was_ something to it, as if jumping, for just a moment, touched upon the domain of the Gods. And he dreaded it.

"_It was the one thing different, in this cycle." A familiar voice whispered in his ear as reality bent around him. He was standing on the surface of ruined Caprica, as if a thousand years of nature had worn down on the decrepit towers. Ellison was beside him, her familiar smile oozing sex and desire._

"_What?" He answered, but his lips didn't move. All about him, time flashed by, the wreckage of a civilization returning to the natural world from whence it came. Forests grew on the grand avenues of downtown. The freeways fell apart, becoming mounds and meadows, stretching out through the decayed towers._

"_Jump drives" Ellison mused, her eyes meeting his with a steady gaze. "It was an accident, of course. Laboratory experiments gone wrong. Your scientists very nearly destroyed themselves in the doing. That is how your kind discovers the truth. Cosmic accident, nothing but chance. But that, too, is part of God's plan."_

_The last of the great towers disappeared, collapsing into the floodplains, as Caprica City became nothing more than the mouth of a rapidly expanding river delta. Yet, hints of the former city remained, lines in the forest that seemed unnatural somehow. Eternal, tarnished bronze statues, reaching through the grassy hills._

"_What does that mean for us, then?" Summers wondered aloud. A meteor cascaded down from the heavens, burying the last remnants of the ancient city in a great flood as it impacted the Great Sea._

"_A chance, perhaps." Ellison looked over the virgin world of Caprica, scoured of human remnants, wild once more. Overhead, great starships entered the atmosphere, a colony fleet descending from the stars, bearing the hideous scars of battle. "Do you know why your kind repeats this cycle, over and over?"_

"_History repeats itself. It's an axiom in the most ancient texts." Summers replied, repeating the mantra of the Scrolls._

"_It certainly does." Ellison agreed, running a finger between her breasts. "But why?" The finger extended, touching his lips, running down his cheeks._

_A strange realization overcame him in that moment. "Men aren't Gods."_

_Ellison smiled. "They certainly aren't. But, sometimes, they start to think they are. That can't be allowed."_

"_You're real. Not just a dream." Summers realized with reverence, watching the colonists repopulate Caprica. "You're really one of the Lords."_

"_Perhaps. But I am not God." Ellison explained. "And neither are you, don't forget that."_

Reality snapped into place around him, and his sense of time was off, somehow. As if, while everyone else had simply winked in and out of existence, he had been elsewhere. But whatever else the Captain may have been, he was a pragmatic man. It would be pointless to discuss his mad visions.

"Miss me, sir?" Elena, callsign Stalker, said pleasantly as she sauntered into CIC.

**oooooooooooooooo**

Someone had finally cobbled together enough paper to actually print out the revised course charts, Summers noted. Frank made his way back into CIC with a cobbled together mess of charts and a full-fledged copy of the ancient scrolls, conveniently in modern binding. The old Captain didn't know why the priesthood always insisted on using actual scrolls for ceremonies when a standard book would do just fine.

Sandra came in behind Frank, her wet hair sticking to her back. The physicist-turned-engineer had decided on using her shower allocation today, apparently, and that boded well for Summers evening. After all she rarely bothered to pretty herself up unless there was a practical reason for it.

He drew his finger along one of Frank's charts, following a moving-average of the various courses and Cylon encounters they had since leaving the colonies.

"This is very strange." Summers rubbed his chin in thought. "See, if we extrapolate the course back to the Colonies.. it's pretty straight-line, up until Kobol. Everything changes there. It bends outward."

Sandra shook her head, clearing her ragged hair from view. "Earth."

Isard looked flabbergasted. "What?"

"Earth." Sandra repeated. "What do you bet the toasters, or whoever they are following... found something important at Kobol. Maybe something that led them to the lost colony. So they alter course."

Jack took a final pull from his cigar, burning it down the nub. "Frak." He cursed as he burnt his fingers slightly. All eyes were on him as he dropped the butt to the deck and crushed it with his boot. Isard looked pained for a moment, as if the salvager had just committed blasphemy.

"Anyway." The Colonel began, glaring slightly at Jack. "Elena's data proves it. They are heading out, almost directly along the spiral axis."

Jack rubbed his hands together and glanced up at Elena. "Yeah, I get that. But what about this transmission of yours?"

"Old Caprican." Elena explained, still clad in her flight suit, sans helmet. "Or something like it, I guess."

"Now why the frak would the toasters put out some satellite transmitting in Old Caprican?" Jack wondered aloud.

"They probably didn't." Elena explained. "Seems to me, it was a Kobolian device."

"Or a Cylon trick." Isard replied.

"No, sir. I don't think so. They seemed very interested in the satellite after they jumped in."

"I can read some of this." Summers said quietly, with a touch of reverence.

"What? Oh yeah." Elena realized. "You're some kind of failed priest."

Summers smiled at her. The pilot was certainly arrogant, and probably not entirely sane, but somehow, the Captain genuinely liked her, in the manner one might like a favorite (if touchy) weapon. "Something like that. So you want to know what it says, or not?"

The pilot merely nodded her assent.

"Thought so. Now, this isn't Old Caprican. It's Kobolian, which is pretty similar I guess. Some of the really ancient scripture commentaries the priesthood used are pretty damn close to this though." Summers began. "That first part is a series of coordinates, although they don't make a lot of sense to me."

"Might make sense to me." Sandra added, glancing warily at the pilot. Summers nodded, writing down the numeric sequence on the first chart. "Yeah, these are no trouble. Similar notations are in the scrolls. Off-hand this is probably not very far from Kobol's location around the time of the exodus. Say, half a light year, maybe less.

Summers nodded and continued. "Now this second bit... can't get all of it. But sounds to me like a warning, and invitation."

"What the hell?" Jack wondered aloud. "That doesn't make sense."

"Sure it does. This first part is almost word-for-word from the Scrolls. Do not return to Kobol, for it shall exact its price in death."

"The Scrolls say exact a price in blood." Isard pointed out.

"This is definitely death. And it's weird. There's another phrase in there that I can't really figure out. Something about 'the heat of the wind.'"

Sandra looked up from the coordinates she had been working out. "Radiation, maybe?"

The Captain shrugged. "Maybe. If we figure it that way, seems to be warning us not to go down because radiation would kill us."

"Wasn't that bad when we scoped out the place." Jack pointed out.

Sandra shook her head. "A few thousand years ago, it was probably a lot worse. The scans we looked at before indicated multiple thermonuclear detonations in the past. Radiation is probably still bad in certain spots, too."

"And the other part, sir?" Elena wondered aloud, using the honorific pointedly. "This invitation thing?"

Summers smiled. "This is where it's interesting. Says here there were two colony fleets, and tells other survivors in the stars to follow the caravan to the twelve worlds."

"And the other?" Jack's interest had been piqued.

"The other... was to rendezvous in deep space, at these coordinates. Something about an alternate route and another fleet." Summers smiled.

"That'd be blasphemous." Jack pointed out.

"Maybe not." Summers answered.

Isard shook his head. "Even if there is something at those coordinates, if those people left something behind, the Cylons would have heard it too."

"Well, sir... they didn't show up until after this sequence of numbers." Elena explained.

Isard replied quickly. "Too risky. Obviously the Cylons are leaving behind some kind of detection devices in the systems they are scouting. They probably heard it."

"I doubt it, sir. For one, I destroyed the satellite. The drone we launched wrecked it completely. Second, they didn't show up until the drone cleared the Ares wreckage." Elena pointed to the message. "The way I figure it is, the drone was what brought them in. I can't guarantee that, though."

Jack nodded, briefly making eye contact with Isard. "You can't guarantee that, and who knows what they might salvage out of the satellite wreckage anyway. Besides, it could still be a Cylon trick."

Elena shook her head. "Really?" Sarcasm dripped from her voice. "The Cylons aren't Gods. So you're saying they whip up some ancient-looking satellite, make it squawk in old Kobolian, plant it in orbit for me to find it because they know we were going to go scout Kobol again later and would just happen upon it?" She cracked a sardonic smile. "I think the Cylons are crafty bitches too, Major. But that would take a lot more than brains to pull off."

"Even if your right," Summers began. "It doesn't mean they can't figure the coordinates out for themselves."

"Not so sure about that." Sandra looked up. "These are coordinates all right, but I can guarantee you they aren't in any Colonial units. Remember when we traced the route to Kobol? The Kobolian units didn't make any sense to me until I realized the Scrolls were reversed, even then the intervals were all wrong. Do the Cylons know that? Because if they don't, these coordinates won't do them any good at all. And nevermind that we still have to calculate them based on the estimated time of exodus, not modern positions."

"I don't like this at _all_ Captain." Isard said. "Following the Cylons and scouting them is one thing. This seems frakking reckless."

"But it's also an opportunity. And if there _is _some kind of roadmap to a safe haven someplace, I'd rather the toasters didn't get their hands on it. Still, I agree with you partly, Colonel. No frakkin' way we're risking the fleet for something like this." Summers stood tall. "Jack, I want you to prep our biggest armed shuttle, and pack it with gear and specialists. I want welders, electronics specialists. Hell, even take Frank here, he's good with communications. And Stalker," he used her call sign deliberately, "you just volunteered to pilot this mission."

Elena smiled. "What are my orders?"

"That's my line, Lieutenant." Jack replied acidly. "So what's the op, Cap'n?"

Summers answered quickly. "I'm commanding it. We're going to see what this thing is about. I'm sick of Gods, of this mystery. Damn, Jack... it's like my father never died. The priesthood would have given up their testicles for this."

"That's truth." Jack answered, semi-reverently. The mysteries of Kobol had entranced an entire civilization for millenia.

"Starting to like me, sir?" Elena smiled dangerously, striking a pose. "Why, sir... do I always get stuck flying these missions?" Elena asked. But the tone of her voice wasn't that of someone complaining. If anything, she seemed to be happy with the state of affairs. Summers supposed he ought to be worried about that.

"It's like you said, pilot. You're a sneaky sort of bitch. For a stubborn bolt, you use a wrench, or maybe a grinder. For shaping gun barrels you use a lathe. For a headache, maybe some pussy. For killing toasters, you use a psychopath." Summers said, shrugging, facing Jack. "Jack, this is an op we've gotta get moving right now. If we do have a head start on the Cylons, I want to use it, get there, and deny them the chance to learn anything if they arrive."

"You got it, Cap'n. What if we run into toasters?" Jack asked.

"We bail. Simple as that." Summers explained.

"Sir." Isard began, but seemed to stumble on the words.

"I know. This is crazy. But I'm the only one who really understands this language. Even then... Gods it's been so long." Summers explained. "There's something going on here, read between the lines. We aren't the only players in this thing."

"No, I don't suppose we are." Isard agreed. "Never been much of a man of the Gods, but it's like their hand is in all of this somehow. I mean... a random jump and we find Graystone's men, and another, _Ares._ I don't want to calculate the odds. But still..."

"It's completely insane." Jack finished for the Colonial officer, waving Frank over. "So's this whole frakking war."

As Jack, Elena and Frank left the bridge, Isard frowned. "I don't like it, sir." He shook his head. "This is too much. If this goes bad, Colonel Nash could use it to take..."

"I know." Summers replied coolly, taking a long pull from his flask. "Believe me, Colonel, I know. But no one in my line of work ever got anywhere without rolling the hard six." The Captain offered the flask to Isard, and surprisingly the Colonial officer decided to take it.

"I hope you're right." He replied. "We'll be here when you get back. I'll hold Nash down."

"We've worked well together, Colonel. I'm trusting you."

"Yes, sir." Isard replied.

**ooooooooooooooo**

Reality twisted around Elena, and she felt the gravity of the moment. Ever since the battle of Kobol, things had changed for her. At first she had despised the pirate captain. She had met many of his ilk in inspections and anti-pirate operations over the colonies, and she had little respect for their intelligence or combat abilities. But Thomas Summers was different, somehow. Perhaps it came from his priestly education, or maybe the man was just naturally prone to introverted, drunken, religious philosophizing. Either way, he turned out to be very different than she had assumed at first.

The small fleet was held together by the firm alliance of Summers and Isard, their rigid grip on leadership was the only thing keeping that idiot Nash from taking over. Elena knew the risk of this operation was as much due to the fragile power structure in the fleet as it was due to the possibility of Cylon attack.

The DRADIS array beeped, the screen awkwardly dangling from the a makeshift panel above her. This shuttle had started out life as one of the many evac shuttles from _Ares_. But a few weeks in the hands of the salvage technicians had seen its armament tripled, with extra point defense cannons. Some were hooked up to computer control, but others were camera-equipped manual turrets operated by gunners aboard ship. There simply weren't enough computers around to control all of the new hardware. A hastily-erected armored-box launcher was mounted above the cockpit, loaded with a complement of Sandra's dumb-fire rockets, rigged to a single switch which would fire the entire box. Extra armor plating reduced her viewport to a thin slit. She had seen many such hodge-podge vessels in the hands of Sagi pirates and Tauron mobsters. But it was quite another thing to be flying one herself.

"Handles like shit." She cursed, reorienting the craft with some difficulty, aiming the DRADIS arc to get a better fix on the signal.

"Ah come on," Jack protested, "She's got a big ass on her, that's all."

"There's something out there, really far off." Elena pointed to the DRADIS display. The original system had been replaced with one of the larger arrays brought over from _Ares, _giving it a truly vast range, but also adding more mass to an already overstressed frame.

Jack stepped over one of the bracing girders, motioning for the copilot to leave, and taking his place. "Take us in closer, but let's play this real careful. Short controlled engine bursts." Jack ordered.

"Kill the active DRADIS scan, too." Summers added. "Passive only until we get in closer. Are the return coordinates in?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, we can bail anytime, Cap'n. Jump drive is hot."

With the slow overall acceleration it took nearly an hour to reach the target area, but by the time they did, it was apparent whatever it was, it wasn't Cylon in origin. And it was undeniably massive, several times larger than even a _Mercury-_class battlestar. All Elena could see was a small area of her viewport utterly devoid of stars.

"Activating the external lights." Elena said, matter-of-factly. "Approaching along the long axis. Hold on to your ass." She rotated the ship about, restarting the main engines for a controlled burn. The weaker grav-field of the shuttle couldn't compensate for the G-forces the same way larger vessels could, and she found herself pushed to the edge of her seat. Somewhere behind her, one of the gunners cursed violently, apparently not listening to her warning.

"Godsdamnit Frank, take off your frakking headphones." Summers barked out. "We're not at the frakking opera."

"Getting video feed. It's up on the main screen, Cap'n." Jack reported. "Gods would you look at that?"

The spotlights played off the surface of the behemoth. The vessel was nearly as large as Fleet headquarters. Immense sublight engines, far larger than anything produced in the colonies, extended along her long axis. Flight pods as long as a battlestar extended on either side of the hull. Elena caught the ancient letter forms, the original Kobolian alphabet sometimes seen on the oldest monuments in the Colonies. "My Gods," she whispered, watching as the computer began to construct the hull form based on visual and DRADIS input.

"The Galleon." Frank dropped his headphones with a sudden clatter, that interrupted the awe.

"Gods, I didn't know what I was expecting," Jack began. "But not this... I didn't expect this." He made the ancient sign of faithfulness in the air. The armored prow of the vessel came into view, similar in general shape to a battlestar, but scaled up to truly massive proportions.

"I did." Summers stated flatly.

"How?" Jack wondered aloud.

"A story my father used to tell me. He spoke of the _last_ Galleon." Summers explained. "It stood to reason there were others."

"But we have no record of them." Elena answered, slowing the craft down.

"Exactly." Summers replied. "All of this has happened before."

Elena's mind latched on to it with sudden insight. "They were _fleet_ units. Like us. They were running. Kobol didn't fall, or at least it didn't fall by itself. They had a machine war of their own."

"Yeah. Seems like they won their war, though. Wrecked their planet in the doing, and were forced to leave it behind." The Captain continued. "So they left beacons behind, for other ships."

"And I activated one." She replied with awe.

The letters on the prow of the vast starship we also written in the ancient letter-forms, but she could make them out. They were still fundamentally similar to the alphabet that replaced them.

"That means Eternity." Summers pointed out. "Fitting, I guess."

"So what happened to them?" Frank wondered aloud. "If they were meeting other ships out here, why is the ship _still_ here?"

"Can't be sure." Summers took a pull from his flask and leaned against a bulkhead. "But if I had to guess.. maybe they had a Miss Ellison, a machine infiltrator of their own. That hull is intact, so you'll probably find sabotage, probably vent-action or something life-support related."

"Gods. It really _did_ happen again." Jack muttered. "The whole godsdamned thing."

"We won't have much time." Summers began. "Find us a way to dock, Lieutenant, even if we have to suit over. Probably won't be any air over there anyway."

Jack's eyebrow lifted in curiosity. "What's the angle, boss?"

"Salvage. What else?" Summers laughed. "Come on, let's see what this museum piece has to offer."

Elena turned her head with sudden interest. "You don't think she'll fly?"

"Maybe. But I bet money she doesn't have a jump drive anyway." The Captain replied. There was a certain mystery to this man, Elena knew, things he obviously wasn't telling anyone. But then, that held true for her, too, didn't it? It wouldn't do to tell everyone she had visions of a Galleon similar to this one, while in the midst of a jump sequence. Or would it? The Captain's eyes met hers, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.

The docking port loomed large in her viewport. And she maneuvered it alongside. The size was all wrong, but it looked hauntingly similar to Colonial fleet docking ports.

"Well Jack," Summers mused. "We might get to use some of these." The Captain hefted a bandolier of death nuts, the makeshift grenades manufactured aboard _Dreadnought._

"Godsdamned frakwit sons'o'bitches." Jack cursed, his tough personality overriding his sense of wonder. "Suit up and prep for boarding."


End file.
